Have you ever wanted to go see some dance, but been unsure of where to start? These basics can open the door to enjoying the beauty and complexity of this physical art.
The Australian Ballet’s new double-bill Identity stages the work of Daniel Riley and Alice Topp in a reflection of the identity of Australian dance – and Australia.
Exposed by Restless Dance Theatre.
Roy Vandervegt/Arts House
Hofesh Shechter’s latest contemporary dance work is not the rousing narrative its title might suggest. Its dancers inhabit a global catastrophe and then a brutal new world order.
Ian Wilkes in Kwongkan, an artistic collaboration between Australia and India.
Daniel Grant
Dance can’t literally tell history, but it can tell historical truths, as shown by Akram Khan’s Xenos at the Adelaide Festival.
Ngathu, in Bangarra’s Ones Country, is a brilliant combination of the contemporary and traditional, telling the story of the ngathu, or cycad, in Arnhem Land.
Photo by Daniel Boud
Bangarra’s current season of three new works, Ones Country, is uneven in parts but worth seeing for the diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices.
7 Pleasures: to explore body politics with a troupe of muscular, lean, able bodied dancers, limits the kinds of questions one might ask.
Marc Coudrais
Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures aims to upend
clichés about nudity. But the ‘confrontational’ use of nudity in dance and performance art is itself now something of a cliche.
South Africa’s foremost contemporary dance festival is celebrating its 28th birthday in 2016. It has remained relevant, vital and – despite the format’s esoteric nature – hugely popular.
Lucy Guerin has grown to be a prominent mentor and consistently inspirational dance artist.
Arts House/Lucy Guerin.
Lucy Guerin is a consistent creative and experimental point of contact for many young dancers and choreographers – and her new work, Motion Picture explores the grey area between nostalgia and modernity.
Dancers find their ‘their sultry siren selves’ in Spanish Dance, choreographed by Trisha Brown in 1973.
Melbourne Festival
A retrospective of the work of American choreographer Trisha Brown (1936-) will be presented at the Melbourne Festival this month. In the performance Early Works, we will have a chance to revisit this…
It’s probably easier to say what contemporary dance is not.
John Hogg/EPA
Contemporary dance is a catch-all phrase used fairly indiscriminately, meaning many things to different dance communities across a wide range of cultures. In fact, it’s probably easier to say what contemporary…
Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney