Review -Te Whaea Theatre, Newtown: Triple Bill Dance Triumph

Review - Te Whaea Theatre, Newtown: Triple Bill a trifecta of triumphant dance

Stephen Olsen
June 12, 2011

Triple Bill, the latest Touch Compass Dance Trust production, presented an elemental tour-de-force on its final day in Wellington at the weekend, with the power of integrated dance shining through in a fluid marriage of human movement, muscular choreography and musical composition.

The musicality of the three pieces – Suzanne Cowan’s Grotteschi, Jeremy Nelson’s Six and Russell Scoone’s Slip – was of particular note, and of equal credit to each piece’s respective musical composer: Charlotte Rose, David Watson and Russell Scoones.

As an instance, the interludes of jaunty accordion in Grotteschi were attuned perfectly to the floorboard gypsy accents performed by Cowan and fellow dancer Adrian Smith. The added lilt of pianola at one point underscored nothing less than the feeling of a 3D silent movie, dramatically brought to a close with the black widow gesture played by Cowan in her role as Ava the amazing spider woman.

The kinetic sound and sight of Six, initially felt in synch a Len Lye artwork. Cowan and Smith, joined by Daniel King, Julia Milsom, Catherine Chappell and Alisha McLenna, turning into assonant clocklike cogs turning apiece in a tympanic assymetric. Again the shifts in musical form made for a phonic complement and punctuation to the dance – the tones of a xylophone, the quiet jarring of piano strings.

In this piece the dancers became apparatuses of some inner machination, a human calumny and keyboard of motion fading into a sonic chamber.

With Kerryn McMurdo and Jesse Johnston-Steele joining the troupe, Slip – full title “Slip, I’m not falling, I’m just hanging on for as long as you hold me” – brought to Triple Bill its most theatrical dimension.

In a controlled ensemble of bodies, clothing and wooden chairs (reminiscent of deck chairs and Samuel Beckett), a common thread to this piece was the tangibility it gave to the unspoken nature of our changing mental states. Against a rising background of classical bass drums and trumpets the audience became a mirror to a veritable ‘flight of the garments’, as dancers rapidly moved to dress or undress themselves on a strewn laundry of troublesome choices

The lyrical dialogue and chemise-like rapport in Slip was made more manifest by the strong use of song to transition from one state to the next. “Everything changes when one hand points up to the sky and one hand down to the ground”.

Through metaphors of perceptibly similar coats and a perceptibly escapable straitjacket, the dancers threw themselves into a cosmic dissonance followed by strummed happiness, an inner war-drobe followed by an inner peace-drobe; ending in an overall allure that even a restless bedtime repose can act as a synaptic salve or provide some form of emotional rescue.

Triple Bill provides another testament to the collaborative creativity able to be mustered by Touch Compass, in staging a production of layered meaning, a production capable of investing the qualities of each piece’s music and movement with clarity, unison and an integration that all dance demands.

Dance is physicality. Dance is improvisation. Non-disabled or disabled. In Touch Compass the combined physicality and improvisation of dance comes first, making any other distinctions meaningless.

A small quibble, for this reviewer was that deploying the dimmest possible lighting for long periods was a minor detractor, when brighter spotlights could have added to the celebration of dance. The playing of timeless classical music during breaks was at odds with the contemporary vibe of Triple Bill.

And one regret – on behalf of anyone with even the vaguest love for dance – was that this short and well publicised season deserved to have a longer life on a larger stage.

Kia kaha Touch Compass!

ENDS

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