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| James Batchelor - Emma Batchelor in "Resonance" |
Lead artist, Choreographer, Producer: James Batchelor
Dramaturg, Producer: Bek Berger – Composer: Morgan
Hickinbottom
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis – Lighting Associate:
Lara Gabor
Costume Designer: Theo Clinkard – Costume Maker: Alice
Ortona Coles
Youth Dance Partner: QL2 Dance.
The Courtyard Studio -Canberra Theatre Centre - October 10th & 11th 2025.
Performance on 10th October reviewed by BILL STEPHENS
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| Dancers performing "Resonance" |
In the latter part of this performance, in what appeared to be a stream-of-consciousness musing, a dancer remarked “I wonder what those critics are writing in their little pads?”. At that moment, this critic was thinking “I wonder what I’m supposed to be thinking about what I am watching just now?”.
Nothing in a James Batchelor work is there without purpose, so
that apparently off-the-cuff remark set up the thought that Tanya Liedtke may
have had some concerns about dance criticism.
In 2023 Batchelor created a masterwork, Shortcuts to
Familiar Places, which explored the technique and legacy of Gertrude
Bodenwieser. Having seen a performance by the Bodenwieser Ballet many years
previously it was fascinating to watch how cleverly he had captured the essence
of her work through exquisitely danced sequences featuring himself and collaborator,
Chloe Chignell, and filmed passages in which Bodenwieser exponents, including
Ruth Osborne and Eileen Kramer, shared their memories of the Bodenwieser
technique.
Remembering being delighted by the originality of Tanja Liedtke’s
choreography in a 2009 performance of Construct in the Canberra Theatre
Centre Playhouse, restaged after Liedtke’s death by Solon Ulbrich, with a cast
that included Kristina Chan, Lisa Griffiths and Paul White, then much later, watching
Life in Movement, the documentary on Liedke and her work; only vague
recollections of her style and technique remained.
Therefore, curiosity as to how Batchelor would shape a legacy
for a young choreographer, whose work he had never seen, because she’d been tragically
killed on the cusp of taking on the daunting task of succeeding Graeme Murphy
as the Artistic Director of the Sydney Dance Company, made Resonance an
unmissable event.
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| Dancers performing "Resonance" |
Performed in-the-round, with the audience seated around the four walls of the Courtyard studio, Resonance began with the 12 dancers sitting on the floor in front of the audience, wearing transparent ponchos over nondescript practice clothes.
Batchelor took the
floor and slowly moved around the room, reading from a small book and with the
aid of a microphone, explaining the circumstances and processes as to how and
why his work came to be created.
He told how he had interviewed many of Liedtke’s associates,
including four dancers who had worked closely with Liedtke and who were
actually taking part in this performance. Those dancers were Theo Clinkard, who
had also designed the costumes, Amelia McQueen, Anton, and Kristina Chan,
seen in that performance of Construct all those years before.
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| Theo Clinkard performing "Resonance" |
The other dancers, though not identified by Bachelor in his narration, were himself, his dance associates, Chloe Chignell and Leah Marojevic, his sister Emma Batchelor, and four senior dancers from QL2, Akira Byrne, Gigi Rohriach, Jahna Lugnah and Maya Wille-Bellchambers.
One-by- one, each of
the four Liedtke dancers took the stage to continue the narration, moving
around the room as they recalled individual interactions with Liedtke,
sometimes recalling and demonstrating snippets of steps and moves she had
created on them and occasionally questioning the accuracy of their own memories.
While the narrations were being delivered, other of the
dancers, still wearing the ponchos and apparently inspired by the descriptions,
began taking the floor to improvise moves inspired by the descriptions, until
the floor was awash with ghostly dancers lost in their own endeavours and
apparently oblivious of each other.
Two particular descriptions of key movements associated with
Liedtke resonated above the others. The one which drew its inspiration from posing
bodybuilders, and another describing the dancer pulling their shirt up over
their head to expose their bare midriff.
The latter because the cover of the printed program for the 2009 performance of Construct featured an image of dancer Paul White pulling his singlet above his head to expose his torso, exactly as described, and the former, because later during the work, Bachelor riffed on this idea to demonstrate how those bodybuilder poses could be re-interpreted in many ways to create beautiful dance movement.
Chloe Chignell - Leah Marojevic - James Batchelor incorporating bodybuilding poses in "Resonance"
The idea of the dancer’s body becoming the archive for a
choreographer’s legacy has long been a basis for reproducing classical ballets,
where dancers who had worked with the original creators are employed to share
their recollections to ensure the accuracy of the restaging.
So, as Resonance moved towards its conclusion
Bachelor embraced this idea to create an exhilarating finale based on Liedtke’s
creativity and driven by Morgan Hickbotham’s orgiastic soundtrack, to express
his idea of how some now- never-to-be-created work by Liedtke may have looked.
As with all of Bachelor’s creations Resonance demands
a great deal from its audience but for those willing to respond to those
demands, his ideas are captivating, always illuminating. His ability to capture
and express the essence of an idea is uncanny.
But apart from the pleasure Resonance provides by reminding of the influence of a
brilliant dance-maker whose potential was cruelly extinguished before it could
properly flower, this work also provided the opportunity to again admire the
brilliance of four talented dancers and other associates, who 18 years after Liedtke’s death are still driven
to preserve her legacy.
Images by Olivier Wikner -O&J Photography
This review also posted in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au