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| Jareen Wee- Luvenia Kalia - Aida Redza in "ALTER" |
Directed by Liz Lea & Peta Khan - Choreographed by Liz Lea and company.
Creative Technologists: Low Zi Xiang and Steve Voon
Lighting Design by Karen Norris – Composer and Musical
Director: Kay Ansah
Technical Direction by Roni Wilkinson – Sound Operator: Kyle
Sheedy
Presented by The Bold Festival and Liz Lea Creates.
Evening performance on November 7, 2026, reviewed by BILL
STEPHENS
Unarguably one of Canberra’s busiest and most creative dance
makers, Liz Lea’s latest work is a fascinating cross-cultural creation combining
advanced technology with live performance. The result is both captivating and
perplexing.
Created as part of both the BOLD and Craft + Design Canberra
Festivals, Alter is a two-part, cross-cultural work for which Lea has
worked with both Malaysian and Australian dancers and creative technologists to
devise a two-part work embracing multiple themes of design, dance, disability
and dissent.
Introducing the work, Lea explained that for the first section entitled 3, the dancers were fitted with sensors which allowed them to interact with images projected on to a huge screen at the back of the stage. For the second section, Virtual View, avatars had been created prior to the performance to which the dancers would respond.
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| Jareen Wee - Luvenia Kalia - Aida Redza in "ALTER" |
As the title suggests, 3 was performed by three Malaysian dancers, Luvenia Kalia, Aida Redza and Jareen Wee. Though costumed individually in black, the stunning lighting design by Karen Norris kept their movements clearly visible throughout the entire section, which commenced with the sounds of water cascading over an abstract horizontal image reminiscent of a brownish waterfall.
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| The dancers in the waterfall section of "ALTER" |
Eventually this image was replaced with another vertical image suggesting harp-strings which twisted into shapes like huge raindrops, or exploded like fireworks, sometimes in response to the movements of the dancers, but at others, seemingly unprovoked.
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| Jareen Wee -Luvenia Kalia - Aida Redza - in "ALTER" |
Not unexpectedly, the choreography for the dancers was also abstract, favouring graceful arm, hand and finger movements associated with traditional Malay and Indian dance styles.
Watching the three dancers gracefully interweave with each
other, as they executed Lea’s complex and demanding choreography, with its beautiful
extended unison passages, as well as create striking shadow images and interact
with the technology, one could only wonder at their skill and virtuosity.
However. given the quality of the trio, it seemed a shame
that just a little more time hadn’t been spent on sharpening the detailing of those
unison passages.
Although the dancing was meditative and calming, watching
the technology respond to the dancers’ movements often distracted from it,
leaving the two elements seeming to compete for attention.
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| The dancers in the "Virtual View" section of "ALTER" |
The interplay between dance and technology continued in Virtual View, the second section of Alter, but with pre-created avatars rather than images responding live to movement.
Aida Redza and Jareen Wee joined local dancers Mia Rashid,
Lim Yu En and Katie Senior, members of Lea’s Chamaelon Collective, in
responding to the avatars which resembled mythical hairy mountain creatures.
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| Lim Yu En and Mia Rashid in the "Virtual View" section of "ALTER" |
Shorter than the first section, and covering similar ground, this section, while providing a charming conclusion to the work, felt contrived.
So that as a creative experiment in the context of both the BOLD and Craft+Design Festivals, Alter has much to admire for its audacity and inventiveness. In its present two-part iteration, however, it’s difficult to see its virtues as a fully realised dance work.
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| Audience members playing in the technology following the performance of "ALTER" Photos by Olivia Wikner - O&O Photography. |
