Dance Nation by Clare Barron.
Director Imara Savage. Designer Jonathan Oxlade. Lighting designer. Alexander Berlage. Choreographer Larissa McGowan. Composer Luke Smiles. Sound designer Andrew Howard. State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir in association with Adelaide Festival. Scott Theatre. February 21 – March 7 2020
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Behind the smiles and beneath the spangles lie the tears and
the fears, the dreams and the disappointments and intimidating Dance Teacher
Pat (Mitchell Butel) driving his young teenage dancers on, In a dance studio in
middle America, aspiring 13 year old dancers strive to win competitions that
will eventually lead them to the ultimate prize trophy. Six adolescent girls
and a solitary teenage boy prepare Dance Teacher Pat’s Gandhi inspired number
in Jonathan Oxlade’s dance studio set of mirrors, barres and a locker where dreams
are revealed, fears are exposed, and friendships are tested. It is a harsh and
bitter world of struggles and rivalries, of failures and successes. It is the
studio of life where young girls are tested on the threshold of their adult
lives.
Their present as Ashlee (Amber McMahon) so graphically describes in a monologue that unleashes the demon within is their future in the moment, the
person they are bound to carry into their future lives. For Ashlee it is
fearless defiance. For Teacher's Favourite(Amina (Yvette Lee) it is the confidence to grasp the opportunity in
the instant of Zuzu’s (Chika Ikogwa)collapse of confidence. Maeve (Rebecca
Massey) grapples with her dark secret that will inform her future, Only Connie
(Emma Harvie) assumes the role of arbitrator. Luke (Tim Overton) assumes the
part of token male in a studio of girls, but in a conversation with Zuzu he is
obviously curious to find the answers to his bewildering questions about love
and sex.
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Rebecca Massey as Maeve and
Mitchell Butel as Dance Teacher Pat
Photo by Daniel Boud
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Barron’s characters are real and personal. Their lives are
complex and the adults Dance Teacher Pat,”I want to get it right” and Zuzu’s ambitious stage mother Vanessa (Elena
Carpetis) complicate rather than appease their young charges’ fears at the
bewildering verge of adolescence and puberty. Savage’s direction is tight, She
navigates the balance between showbiz artifice and teenage angst. Barron has purposefully
cast older women in the roles of the young girls in the belief that the
personalities forged at the cusp of adolescence will continue to be revealed in
adulthood. Savage has cast her actors
well according to Barron’s insistence on older women in the roles, rather than
actors in their twenties to play 13 year olds. l, and the actors handle Larissa
McGowan’s choreographed routines well.
A long locker room scene between Connie, Sofia (Tara Morice),
Ashlee and Maeve lapses in believability as actors appear to drop character to
present the older woman’s perspective. Perhaps this is intentional and perhaps
I am being ageist or perhaps the scene is just too long but for a while I
ceased o believe the 13 year old and be puzzled by the emergence of real life
actor.
Dance Nation, though well produced, convincingly performed
and obviously entertaining, echoes in part the legacy of Fame or Chorus Line though without the musical numbers,
or many other works that depict real life behind the top hat and tails or
glittering gold lame. Barron focuses on the plight of the dance studio
hopefuls, in a play that is arresting and relevant. Whether this American Pulitzer Prize finalist
warrants a place in a ground-breaking Adelaide Festival programme – of that I’m
not so sure.
