| Abstract/Description |
This is only the third edition of Pieces, an annual showcase of work by independent choreographers, but already it feels like an institution of many years standing in the Melbourne dance scene.
The evening’s first work, Melanie Lane’s Into the Woods, places itself in the long tradition of modern and contemporary dances about witchcraft and the persecution of people believed to be witches.
Lane moves with power and purpose in front of a computer-generated image of a medieval hut, while her costume billows around her like an ominous black cloud encircling her waist.
There’s an account of an execution, a recording of an eyeless woman reciting a poem by Victor Hugo and a duet with Sara Black. And somehow, as if by magic, it all coheres.
Rachael Wisby’s Roses, a meditation on 19th-century ballet, gives an impression of cut flowers left too long in the bowl: things that were once upright are now drooping, fading and decomposing.
Wisby wafts back and forth in a translucent gown, projecting mingled lassitude and distress. Meanwhile, her boots are airlifted to the safety of the rigging.
The piece concludes with Wisby narrating a sci-fi version of Giselle while drawing back all the curtains. It’s a crowded finale where either one or the other gesture would have been sufficient.
The final work, and my highlight, is Amber McCartney’s Tiny Infinite Deaths, a tour de force translation from the natural world in which McCartney performs the dance of the maggot.
With its sleazy, retro-futuristic score by Makeda Zucco and an enchanting larva-like costume by Andrew Treloar, this portrait of a jiving juvenile grub is deliciously unsettling.
Amber McCartney performs the dance of the maggot in a tour de force production.
Beginning with twitches and pulses, the grub graduates to strutting and twirling and sashaying. It grows into a character of fascinating mutability, forever on the cusp of a more permanent transformation. |
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