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| Ryan Douglas Stone in "Solus" |
Presented by
QL2 Dance,
QL2 Theatre,
Gorman Arts Centre, 16th and 17th December, 2016
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
For the last
ten years, QL2 Dance has brought together young choreographers engaged in
full-time dance studies in Universities around Australia, for its annual “On
Course” project. As in previous years, each of the choreographers was provided
with access to current Quantum Leap dancers on which to create a short work for presentation over two
nights, and a choreographic mentor, this
year, James Batchelor, himself a former Quantum Leaper, and now making an
impact internationally.
With six of
the nine participating choreographers being Quantum Leap alumni, this year’s program provided an opportunity to observe not
only the development of these young dance makers, but also a snapshot of
current trends in current contemporary dance practice.
James
Batchelor’s influence was obvious in the first offering by Rachel Wisby, who
had her dancers lumping bricks around the Gorman House courtyard in a curiously
unresolved work. Maddy Towler Lovell had her four dancers responding to
voice-over instructions to tasks like putting both feet behind their ears, in
an amusing exploration of the limitations of the body, and Nasim Patel also
elicited smiles as his six dancers executed a series of neatly devised
vignettes to depict party culture.
Humour was
also present in Patrick Keogh Walker’s work in which two dancers improvised
intricate intertwining movements to a story about children playing at wars.
Samuel Hamman demonstrated a strong sense of the theatrical with an ambitious
work for six dancers, exploring ideas of self-discovery, while Luke Fryer
contributed an interesting work, in which his two dancers appeared both on video
and in live performance.
However it
was three solo pieces which provided the most interesting works of the evening.
Alana Stenning utilised the Blue Danube Waltz, pre-recorded voice-overs,
several spotlights, and a strongly developed dance technique in her
work-in-progress exploring concepts of femininity.
Oonagh
Slater drew on elements of tableau vivant to present a superbly conceived and
visually arresting work in which she skilfully manipulated oranges to produce a
succession of lovely images, and Ryan Douglas Stone made imaginative use of
shadows and reflections in his moody and beautifully executed solo entitled
“Solus”.
However,
while it was interesting to note that there were ideas aplenty, not many
included actual dance. The choreographers seem satisfied to experiment with
abstract internal concepts, accompanied by oblique program notes which provided
little enlightenment towards understanding their work, prompting one perplexed
audience member to ask, during the Q & A which followed the performance,
“Who are you making these works for?”
Photo: Lorna Sim
This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 17th December 2016