Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, October 18. Antony Hamilton says his new work for Sydney Dance Company developed from thoughts about order, chaos, human nature and popular culture. And yes, you can see that (a state of grace that, alas, is not always the case with choreographers’ program notes). But Hamilton’s ideas are for pondering afterwards. In…
Tag: Benjamin Cisterne
2 One Another, Sydney Dance Company
Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney. October 5. Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela clearly adores 2 One Another. Made in 2012, it was revived in 2013, 2014 and 2015, is much travelled and this season celebrates its 100th performance by making its first reappearance in Sydney. Next stop is Shanghai. Audiences love it too, and…
Liveworks: Chan, Gunn & Lloyd, Choy
Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art. The Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney, October 27, November 2. A pulsating, unforgiving light picks out Kristina Chan’s forehead and underscores her cheekbones, sculpting her face into an eerie mask. A lone figure in the gloom, she rises to the balls of her feet then drives her heels into the…
Untamed: Sydney Dance Company
Wildebeest and Anima. Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney, October 20. In the double bill Untamed, Gabrielle Nankivell’s Wildebeest and Rafael Bonachela’s Anima come at the same question – what is our true, essential nature? – from quite different perspectives. Nankivell sets humankind’s most primal impulses against the slick, guarded sophistications of modern life. The…
Off the Record: Force Majeure with Dance Integrated Australia
Carriageworks, Sydney, August 17. Marnie Palomares has Alex Jones pinned against a wall and is trying to put words into his mouth. Literally. This would be a resonant image under any circumstances but as Jones is deaf it seems an even more intrusive and futile act than usual. Except it’s a moment that also feels…
Sydney Dance Company
CounterMove. Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney, February 29. LUX Tenebris – Light in Darkness – is the name of Rafael Bonachela’s new work but it could well have been chosen to describe Sydney Dance Company’s new double bill as a whole. The company’s reprise of Alexander Ekman’s Cacti, which opens the evening, puts the…
The Australian Ballet’s 20:21
Sydney Opera House, November 5 After a year dominated by Giselle, Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella, the lavish new Sleeping Beauty and Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, the dancers of The Australian Ballet were undoubtedly delighted to dive into the pared-back costumes and sharp-edged choreography of 20:21 (the title refers to the 20th and…
Quintett, Frame of Mind
Sydney Theatre, March 9 and 10. IT was a great coup for Rafael Bonachela to secure William Forsythe’s Quintett for Sydney Dance Company. It is a jewel of the contemporary repertoire with so many facets and colours it could be seen again and again without exhausting its possibilities. And to see it danced as was…
Current Sydney theatre
Blue/Orange, Ensemble, October 29; Emerald City, Griffin, November 10; A Christmas Carol, Belvoir, November 12; Daylight Saving, Eternity Playhouse, November 13; Cyrano de Bergerac, Sydney Theatre, November 18. WHY did quite a few commentators, myself included, feel we had to advertise our reservations about the prospect of A Christmas Carol? Or to liken ourselves to…
Let’s get physical
Louder Than Words, Sydney Dance Company. Sydney Theatre, October 8. IT’S hard to know where to begin with Andonis Foniadakis’s fantastical Parenthesis, a piece that turns the dial up to 11 and then some. Perhaps praise for Sydney Dance Company’s ferociously committed dancers should come first. They are a super-talented and game bunch who can…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 