| Abstract/Description |
"Death is a dance, a ballroom, a glove; An extension of total abandon in love."
This quarter-century old sentiment incontrovertibly comes from Patti Smith, but since I can't track down the original poem, you'll have to rely on my fickle memory. The odd (and age-old) combination of inner certainty and outer doubt is especially apt when writing about any recent work from Lucy Guerin, since memory, dreams and the "mind's eye" are recurring themes in the Dance Works generation of 30-something choreographers, of which Guerin is a First XI player.
And Smith's version of the dance of death - the "Totentanz" so often referred to by artists and composers - is unexpectedly apt for this work. Dance and death are major themes; but, additionally, The Ends of Things was nearing completion when Guerin's brilliant young sound designer and collaborator, Jad McAdam, died abruptly from an aneurysm.
Guerin has always been a brilliant motivator and dance director - her Prix d'Auteur at Bagnolet was no accident - but here, with The Ends of Things, her choreography is, at last, as refined and exact as her stage craft.
Yes, it's hard to go wrong when Trevor Patrick (pictured, above), Brett Daffy, Ros Warby and Stephanie Lake are making your ideas flesh, but Guerin does so much more than merely keeping her dancers occupied and focused. Ros Warby dances with supernatural concentration. Her movement is elegantly symmetrical, digital without being finicky or rigid, and rhythmic without looking at all forced. Yet The Ends of Things is brilliantly stagey in its stylised representation of the violent (if oddly amiable) outside world.
Through Warby and Daffy, Guerin manages to convey that the world is beyond our control, but that fate is benign somehow. That, whatever
happens, it's nothing personal.
The Ends of Things wilts slightly midway through, but the overall impression it leaves is that we have witnessed something quite miraculous, an exhilarating and beautiful work.
In Chunky Move's late show, at the same venue, Gideon Obarzanek toys with a related theme in the centre work of a triple bill. In his own words, Crumpled is a "purely structural and formal work [which] continues . . . whether it is viewed or not". But this is no stodgy brainteaser; it is a thumpingly physical and highly theatrical work.
Crumpled is additional proof that Obarzanek is worthy of the investment that has been made in him by the State Government. It's also an illustration of the importance of building ensemble. We've watched Fiona Cameron become a terrific exponent of Chunky Move's weighty style; now we have the pleasure of watching Obarzanek find something similar in Nicole Johnston. |
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