L - Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Mirramu Dance Company

Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre - 15th July 2015.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

“L” was conceived as the second half of a two-part program to be presented in the Dunstan Playhouse in Adelaide, this Saturday, to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Australian Dance Theatre, which Dalman founded in June, 1965. Australian Dance Theatre will provide the first half of that program.

Presented for just two performances at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, prior to its Adelaide outing, “L” proved to be a charming elegy to Dalman’s 50-year contribution to professional contemporary dance in Australia.

Homage to Botticelli
Miranda Wheen - Vivienne Rogis - Janine Proost 

Graced with excellent lighting and sound design, and superbly danced by the six excellent Mirramu Dance Company dancers, Hans David Ahwang, Amanda Tutalo, Vivienne Rogis, Mark Lavery, Miranda Wheen and Janine Proost, together with Dalman herself, “L” is performed without interruption, as a stream of consciousness series of vignettes.  Among them several  examples of Dalman’s  seminal  works, choreographed either by Dalman herself or with collaborators over the years, including the striking “Old Company”  performed to bird sounds,  the super  romantic “Homage to Botticelli”, the deliciously druggy “Generation Gap” , and a brilliantly performed  “Limousine for Janis”. 

The Firebird,
Miranda Wheen 

Interspersed between these, are choreographic contributions by Mirramu Dance Company alumni, of which Miranda Wheen’s sparkling interpretation of “The Firebird”, danced in Dalman’s original red costume, and Vivien Rogis’s evocative “Sapling” were outstanding. 

Appropriately Dalman herself is the connecting thread of the work.  Whether retrieving a red feather dropped by the firebird or, as an old woman struggling with a bag of stones which she carefully places around the base of a sapling to become the symbol of the circle of life, as each scene transitions seamlessly into the next, Dalman is the reason.

 But her contribution is much more than that.   At one point she performs a demanding solo, “Silver Lining”.  Later she joins Hans David Ahwang in a graceful duet, choreographed by Albert David, “Tree Spirit”.  She even contributes some energetic jive during the joyous “Dance Party”.

Young Woman
Vivienne Rogis - Miranda Wheen - Elizabeth Cameron Dalman 

More than just a life-affirming tribute to an extraordinary career, “L” is a superbly cohesive work in its own right. Not only for the fascinating insights it contains into the life’s work of a remarkable dancer and dance-maker, but also as inspirational proof of the energy and continuing influence of this remarkable human being.  As such it deserves a much wider audience.  

Mirramu Dance Companu
Hans David Ahwang. Amanda Tutalo, Vivienne Rogis, Mark Lavery, Miranda Wheen, Janine Proost, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman

           This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 16th July 2015

Circus Under My Bed

Circus Under My Bed by Flying Fruit Fly Circus. Artistic director Jodie Farrugia. Writer Sebastien Pasche. At Canberra Theatre Centre, July 16-18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 16

Fruit Flies are a major source of irritation to Australian agriculture, so it’s not surprising that the Flying Fruit Fly Circus began in the Riverland fruit growing region along the River Murray at Albury-Wodonga on the New South Wales / Victoria border.  In 1979, influenced by the success of Circus Oz, the Murray River Performing Group, mainly graduates from Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts Drama School, introduced circus skills for children as part of their community street theatre activities.

By 1987 The Flying Fruit Fly Circus grew into a Victorian Government Education Department Circus School, using public school facilities in Wodonga – the only circus school in Australia for primary/secondary school students.  By 1995 Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne established the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA), offering at first a Diploma course, and nowadays a range of courses up to a 3-year Bachelor Degree.

Canberra has a long history of children’s circus.  I may even claim some kudos here, when my Year 8 students took their self-devised circus to a local primary school in 1975.  But the real claim to fame belongs to Warehouse Circus, which began here in 1990.  See http://warehousecircus.org.au/programs/  and http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/circus-program-dubbed-therapy-in-disguise-wins-act-government-grant-20150603-ghfm3t.html .

So maybe Fruit Flies is a good example of a typical Australian ironic view of life, just as Circus Under My Bed humorously challenges the authority of Celeste’s mother.  We only hear her voice demanding that Celeste pack her bag to leave in the morning.  I was not sure what this meant: would this be a fun holiday trip, or could it be about leaving home?  Was Celeste not too keen to get the packing done just because it was a chore, or because she suspected some dire consequence?

Photos: Daniel Bound

Celeste fulfils her mother’s requirements but without her mother knowing her secret.  Her bed turns into a safety mattress for flying gymnastic cavorting, hanging from the ceiling is a twin silk drop for aerial work, furniture turns into balancing stands, rings appear for twirling and others for aerial spinning, and the ringmaster – almost tiny compared to the strong man – even succeeds in finding Celeste’s favourite book.  There are no real animals in circus nowadays, of course, but there were plenty of sheep and even their well-trained sheep dog, all of whom jumped over, under and through all sorts of fences, in Celeste’s dream circus.

Though I am used to seeing all kinds of modern circus with all kinds of socially correct themes, I’m glad that the Flying Fruit Flies – aged from 9 to 19 – could show their training in a show which was just entirely entertaining without need for further implications.  It really was designed as a children’s show for children (and me) to enjoy.  And I guess even Celeste’s mother was happy in the end.

And I’m sure NICA will receive some well-justified applications before long.

I would like to acknowledge the (unwitting) assistance of Michelle Potter, whose review is at http://www.smh.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/circus-under-my-bed-by-flying-fruit-fly-circus-has-some-strong-performances-20150717-gieboh.html

Chris Neal in conversation with the Canberra Critics Circle.

Lighting and sound wizard Chris Neal was the last guest for 2015 in the series In Conversation with the Canberra Critics Circle and what a stimulus for lively discussion his work turned out to be.

A local lad, Canberra born, he was the sort of kid who starts out running sound and lighting for school assemblies, moving on to volunteer work for various Canberra theatre groups and companies. That volunteer technical theatre work turned into the firm Eclipse Lighting and Sound, the technical and design wizards behind such shows as Jeff Wayne’s War of The Worlds in 2012 and the more recent Jesus Christ Superstar.

Neal proved to be a quiet but impassioned talker who soon had the entire Circle discussing light and sound. He showed that it is possible to ‘build a job’ by finding out where the ‘gaps and holes’ are in local theatre and filling them.

He reminded us that unless, as is the case on big shows like Jesus Christ Superstar the technical and design preplanning has taken months or even years, it is lighting and sound that often has less rehearsal than any other departments. Yet the expectation of course is that they won’t sound under rehearsed on opening night.

He talked about newer lighting equipment and moving (‘intelligent’) lighting and the change wrought by new technology on the look and use of stage colours. It’s a revolution akin to that brought about when in the late C19 gas was replaced by electricity. (Fewer theatres went up in flames but many people missed the old ambience.)

There was a lively discussion too about mikes versus voice projection. Again, it’s about a technical revolution but there was a thread of nostalgia from some of the Circle for the old players who could fill a theatre with unassisted voice.

Not from Neal. There could have been a whole other session about lighting the ‘straight play’ but Neal’s joy has become making the big shows work, the ones that these days are full of spectacular technology of a kind that the audience has come to expect. 

There’s clearly a whole thread to be followed, too, on the use of light in art and in galleries and projections on buildings in events like Canberra’s Enlighten and Sydney’s Vivid but that’s for another time.

Meantime Chris Neal’s enthusiastic outlook on what my old Leeds University lighting teacher Trevor Faulkner used to call ‘technology in the service of art’ served as a needful stimulus to the Circle’s thinking on such issues.

Alanna Maclean

Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht

Image by Julian Meagher

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Michael Gow.  Belvoir, Sydney, directed by Eamon Flack.  Designer: Robert Cousins; costumes by Alice Babidge; lighting by Benjamin Cisterne; fight choreographer: Scott Witt.  At Belvoir St Theatre Upstairs, June 10 – July 26, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 15

Photos by Heidrun Lohr

Robyn Nevin as Mother Courage

Robyn Nevin as Mother Courage

I feel like scrawling “Robyn Nevin” all over the page like graffiti on a war-damaged wall, in recognition of her tour de force in this production.  It would be completely unfair, of course, since it was Brecht who made her be on stage for just about every scene, except when she has to dash off briefly for more supplies – only to return that time to find her mute daughter Kattrin shot.  Which reminds me, Emele Ugavule is on stage as much as her mother, with a presence as telling, though she cannot speak.  Hers is another tour de force which reminds me that this play is about the strength of character of women in wartime, in the face of the weakness of character in men – even including Kattrin’s half-brothers, Eilif – Richard Pyros and Swiss Cheese – Tom Conroy.

Richard Pyros (Eilif), Emele Ugavule (Kattrin), Tom Conroy (Swiss Cheese)
Robyn Nevin (Mother Courage)
Mother Courage and her Children

In fact, I should not forget that all the actors are on stage for much more than you might realise, since they all play ‘others’ as well as their named parts: Yvette – Paula Arundell, Sergeant – Lena Cruz, Young Soldier – Michael McStay, General – Alex Menglet, Cook – Arky Michael, Chaplain – Anthony Phelan, Clerk – Hazem Shammas, as well as Pyros and Conroy.

And they are all terrific musicians and singers.  In other words, there’s not much ‘alienation effect’ in this production; just a tremendous sense of community teamwork.

Robyn Nevin and Cast in song

The result is the best Mother Courage  I’ve seen.  There was an energy and life from go to whoa.  We didn’t need be slowed down by the ‘literalisation’ of the theatre, with lengthy post-it notes above the stage at the beginning of each scene, like SPRING, 1624.  IN DALARNA, THE SWEDISH COMMANDER OXENSTIERNA IS RECRUITING FOR THE CAMPAIGN IN POLAND.  THE CANTEEN WOMAN ANNA FIERLING, COMMONLY KNOWN AS MOTHER COURAGE, LOSES A SON. [Eric Bentley translation, Methuen, 1962]. 

All we need is a flash like a small lightning bolt to shift us into the next scene.  The story tells itself, in an effective translation – which incidentally does not seem very different from Eric Bentley’s even though I’m aware that his work was superseded for approval by the Brecht Estate in later times by Hugh MacDiarmid, John Willett, Howard Brenton and David Hare.  Perhaps Michael Gow has managed to smooth a path around the experience of David Hare in 2004 when his translation of Galileo was refused publication by the Brecht Estate.  Since then Stefan Brecht has died, in 2009.  I hope Gow’s Mother Courage will make it to the bookshelves (though probably not those of Bookshelves Brandis, I guess). 

See [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/14/arts.theatre] for some background reading.

Arky Michael as Cook and Robyn Nevin as Mother Courage

Emele Ugavule as Kattrin and Tom Conroy as Swiss Cheese

Paula Arundell as Yvette before taking up with the General

Robyn Nevin as Mother Courage with the Cook's pipe, and
Paula Arundell as Yvette after taking up with the General

Emele Ugavule as Kattrin trying to dress like Yvette

Emele Ugavule as Kattrin, drumming to alert the town of impending attack

What Eamon Flack and his team have achieved is a real sense of war and the horror (for Anna Fierling) of peace when she has just accepted the Chaplain’s advice that the war will go on, more or less forever, and she buys up on stock to sell at the army camps on both sides.  We don’t need to know that this is the Thirty Years’ War of 17th Century Germany.  We can be certain it’s the same story in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan today, as it was in Vietnam etc. etc. etc.

I’m a little late in the run, but you have another week to get yourself to Sydney.  Just go to belvoir.com.au first to make sure there’s room.


[Conflict of Interest Note:  The Brecht Estate would not let me use Eric Bentley’s translation of The Threepenny Opera in 1976.  Only Hugh MacDiarmid was acceptable at the time.]

Love and Information by Caryl Churchill

Love and Information by Caryl Churchill.  Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne) and Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Kip Williams.  Designer: David Fleischer; Lighting: Paul Jackson; Composer and sound: The Sweats.  At Wharf 1, Sydney, July 9 – August 15, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 15

If you were schizophrenic and heard voices which only told you to hurt one person (who might be your psychiatrist, or perhaps she is really your mother), and this person says to you, “If you took your medication, you wouldn’t hear the voices, would you?”, and you know that’s true, what would you say?

The young man in this scene explains, quite rationally I thought, that that’s why he doesn’t take his medication: he wants to hear the voices to know what to do.

By the time you’ve read this far, the scene is over, the white rostra blocks have been shifted by the cast into a new configuration, and a new scene is already taking place.

Scene setting
Cast - Zahra Newman in spotlight

 

In this version of Love and Information, Kip Williams and his fast-moving cast – Marco Chiappi, Harry Greenwood, Glen Hazeldine, Anita Hegh, Zahra Newman, Anthony Taufa, Alison Whyte and Ursula Yovich – present 70 of the possibilities provided by Caryl Churchill in her non-narrative exploration of such conundrums.  None of the problematic questions are resolved.  In some situations love seems to depend on receiving or giving information.  In others too much information seems about to ruin a relationship, or be entirely irrelevant.  The reliability of information is often an issue, as much as the quality of love.

Information and love?
Glenn Hazeldine and Ursula Yovich

As a philosophical work, the nearest to a conclusion I could reach was that whether we like it or not we have to accept that the modern discovery of the Uncertainty Principle via the mathematical modelling of the physical universe applies in all aspects of our moment-by-moment lives.

Sister or mother?
Anita Heg and Harry Greenwood

Space for information?
Anita Hegh

Theatrically, it’s most like watching Impro Theatre.  The actors have titles for the scenes to work off – like ‘The Child...Pain’, ‘Earthquake’, ‘Wedding Video’ or ‘Depression’ (from 1 to 9 of these) – but we, watching, are not given even these clues (unless we buy the program which includes a matrix of scenes and who plays in each one).  In Impro Theatre there can be some continuity, as an incoming actor may add to the action of the actors already in play, or change the direction with at least some kind of progression into a new scene altogether.  But the scenes in Love and Information are all in “jump” mode, with absolutely no connection from one to the next.

In one scene, someone tries to explain our behaviour as the result of the “random” nature of evolution – but, interestingly enough, evolution is not mathematically random in fact, even if we are not able to predict from one state of a species what the next step will be to another state.  Since we can’t even predict who we will fall in love with, we might think our genetic make-up is random, but looking back we can see there’s a process involved (as Mendel found out about peas in a pod).

With such a skilled team of actors and a design which is exactly appropriate for Churchill’s conception, you can be assured you will enjoy the production, even if I can’t guarantee that you will see the exact same show that I saw.  My sense is that the tremendous fun which improvisation is for these actors has kept up its momentum from the rehearsal room to the performances.  You won’t find yourself worrying about the philosophy, or whether you should always tell the truth or not, even if you think you know it.  You’ll just be engaged in objectively observing our species struggling along, sometimes sad, often wryly amusing, much of the time just very funny.  If there’s one scene you won’t forget, it has to be the one in the natural history museum, not shown here.  But I’ll say no more.  You'll have to go to see for yourself.

Loss
Cast - Alison Whyte in spotlight

Pool
Ursula Yovich and Harry Greenwood

Magazine
Zahra Newman

Photos by Pia Johnson

L

Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Mirramu Dance Company

Q Theatre, Queanbeyan 15 July 2015

Review by Len Power

L – the Roman Numeral for ‘50’ – is an appropriate title for this show which celebrates Elizabeth Cameron Dalman’s 50 years of professional contemporary dance in Australia.

Born in Adelaide, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman studied and danced in Europe, London and the USA.  She founded the Australian Dance Theatre in 1965 and was its artistic director for 10 years.  She was awarded a Medal Of The Order Of Australia (an OAM) in 1995 for her contribution to contemporary dance in Australia and is currently Director of the Mirramu Creative Arts Centre at Lake George.  And at age 81, she is still dancing!

‘L’ is a program that links various works of the past 50 years associated with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman with new works by her and her current company.  The collection gives a sense of time passing and looking back at life’s experiences and forward, courageously, to the end of life.  It’s wistful and nostalgic with good accompanying choices of music and flashes of humour here and there.

The company of seven dancers performs the program very well.  Highlights were ‘Sapling’, a dance about a young tree bursting with life, choreographed and performed beautifully by Vivienne Rogis; ‘Memories’, an excerpt from ‘Homage To Botticelli’, from a 1969 Australian Dance Theatre program, by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman; the haunting ‘Excerpt from 1972’s Limousine for Janis’, choreographed by Eleo Pomare to music by Janis Joplin and Yoko Ono and ‘Tree Spirit’, an adaptation of choreography of Albert David, performed by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Hans David Ahwang.  This young dancer gave an especially magnetic performance in this sequence.

The Company - from left: Hans David Ahwang, Amanda Tutalo, Vivienne Rogis, Mark Lavery, Miranda Wheen, Janine Proost, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM (Photograph by Barbie Robinson)

Lighting by Rodney Bates was excellent as were the costumes by Sharon Rasker.

This was a memorable evening of dance by an accomplished company.  Elizabeth Cameron Dalman is, without a doubt, a living legend.

 

Len Power’s reviews are also broadcast in the ‘Artcetera’ program on Artsound FM 92.7 on Saturdays from 9am.

Janet DeBoos in conversation with the Canberra Critics Circle

JANET  DeBoos is a highly acclaimed ceramic artist and educator.  

  

Janet DeBoos

After ten years as Head of the ANU School of Art ceramic work shop she has retired and is now an Emeritus Fellow at the School of Art, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.  Janet De Boos was the Master of Ceremonies at "Stepping Up", the Australian Ceramics Triennial that was held recently in Canberra (9-11 July) with associated exhibitions running during the month of July and August. Janet had a highly successful exhibition of her work in the ANU Canberra School of Art Gallery last year and was awarded a Canberra Critics’ Circle Visual Art Award in 2014.  She also had a Survey Exhibition at Craft ACT in July this year.

Janet answered questions from the circle about the nature of ceramics, which she defined as fired clay. Pottery, she added, is what you do with it. She also noted the development of cutting edge ceramics which involved performance and Installation work and artists who questioned the permanence of clay by making forms that dissolve over time.

Janet discussed her own career and the part played by Peter Rushforth in suggesting she study pottery at the old East Sydney Technical College. Janet originally studied science but was always drawn to the creative arts. (Incidentally, the Canberra Critics Circle might like to know that Peter Rushforth was awarded a special honour at the 2015 “Stepping Up” conference dinner.)

Recent works by Janet DeBoos

The discussion then centred on the nature of ceramics- the importance of the handmade and functional pottery. The history of porcelain was then discussed and Janet’s own ongoing links with Jingdezhen the porcelain capital of China  and the influence on her own work of her Asian experience. (Janet has also inaugurated biannual trips to Jingdezhen by ANU ceramic students.) Janet also talked about her connection with indigenous artists from Ernabella Arts in South Australia and the cross cultural links that have been at play in their work and her own.

 This was a very interesting and informative talk and I hope the Canberra Critics Circle will seek out Janet DeBoos’ work for themselves.

Kerry-Anne Cousins, member  of Canberra Critics Circle, July  13 2015.