| Abstract/Description |
Choreographer Luke George's short new work entitled Fell contains only a single image, but it's so well composed, so resonant and so absorbing that you almost feel it could be sustained indefinitely without losing any of its power.
Fell is one of three pieces commissioned for the annual Lucy Guerin Inc showcase at the Substation. It features George in a harness amid bright yellow ropes suspended high above the audience, counterbalanced by a large log.
And there he hangs without moving. It's a beautifully orchestrated scene, tranquil but implying great drama and violence, evoking the fascination that still images of bodies falling through space have always commanded, from Bruegel to Yves Klein to Richard Drew.
It's clear that George is also tumbling back through the history of contemporary dance, encountering those famous works by Trisha Brown in which she rigged her dancers to walk across walls and down the sides of buildings.
Then there is the log - the felled tree - which keeps the dancer suspended, even as he appears to be falling away from it. His reliance on the weight of the wood, and his constant connection to it, invite multiple interpretations.
The program also features a somewhat anodyne conversation between dancer and choreographer Amrita Hepi and sex worker Tilly Lawless in which the two compare notions of work and performance.
There's a lot of talk and not much movement, but a few tricks and suggestive positions are illustrated along the way.
The final piece, however, is a joyful frolic for six dancers by Harrison Ritchie-Jones. The scenario is wilfully and delightfully absurdist, with the ensemble costumed as a troupe of synchronised swimmers but performing in the corporeal idiom of hangry toddlers.
They moan and groan and stagger about, crashing into one another, sprawling and bawling and lurching through their routine.
It's a grand mess and, if nothing else, the perfect symbol for end-of-year burnout. |
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