Dance, Music and Theatre: Clocking all the right moves as the minutes tick by

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Title Dance, Music and Theatre: Clocking all the right moves as the minutes tick by
Creator Contributors
Abstract/Description Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is - A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle. It's a collaboration between choreographer Gerard Van Dyck, filmmaker Sal Cooper and composer Kate Neal, and it's as intriguing as it is entertaining. This is a 45-minute musical suite performed by a quartet trading under the name Rubiks Collective. (Yes, it's that sort of puzzle.) And just like a medieval book of hours this meditation on the mystery of time and how it passes is lavishly illuminated. While the band plays, we see a series of quirky dance films created by Cooper with Van Dyck. Taking us from matins to compline, earliest morning to the end of the day, Van Dyck moves and a world of everyday objects moves with him. The suite opens with stop-motion animations of white-faced kitchen clocks against a stark white background, black arms spinning. Van Dyck extends and spins his own arms. He is in bed or propped against a wall, taking cover as the clocks fall around him. Meanwhile, percussionist Kaylie Melville develops a dinky tick-tock rhythm with gong chimes, kick drum, a hotel call bell and other hard-to-identify objects. Jacob Abela interjects with busy flurries of notes on the harpsichord: time is passing and the day is getting on. Van Dyck, a veteran Melbourne-based performer, often incorporates character elements into his solo work and choreography. His movements are light and exploratory but everything he does has personality. We see a shot of a featureless brick wall. Van Dyck flings himself from outside the frame. It happens again and again. Time to face the world. Melody collapses with him as Gemma Kneale on cello plays chaotic scales falling away to a kick-drum thud. A Book of Hours is never predictable and the instrumentation is absurd. There's music for four toothbrushes. There are wind-up toys that dance and whir. And flautist Tamara Kohler blows around her instrument - huffing and muttering - as much as she blows into it. They run about and swap places and create a texture of busy-ness as the day goes on. Kate Neal's score includes gestures such as chin stroking and hair ruffling, which are picked up - albeit faintly - on body microphones. And on the screen, everything dances: vegetables and wine glasses and furnishings. The day comes to an end with a dreamlike replay of all that came before, underlining what an accomplished bit of light-heartedness this show is.
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Source The Age, Francis Cooke, South Melbourne, Vic, 1854
Page 17
Date Issued 18 September 2023
Language English
Citation Andrew Fuhrmann, Dance, Music and Theatre: Clocking all the right moves as the minutes tick by, The Age, 18 September 2023, 17
Data Set AusStage
Resource Identifier 78056