Heavy Mobile Studio, Melbourne.
June 14, 2024.
It seemed like a simple proposition. Two dancers, a modest set and a sphere suspended like the moon. In a clear diagonal line of light, they turn toward textured electrons. Classic modern dance scene. It can be anything or nothing; that’s its power. With these basic tools, entire worlds can be created.
Melbourne choreographer Lucy Geurin is renowned for creating work that lives both indoors and outdoors. and beyond the traditional scope of modern art forms. single action No exception. You feel like you’ve seen it before, but not quite like this. There’s a smart, flexible concept and drama that draws you in, while still leaving room to move.
Grant may not be too keen on dance narratives, but the arc of dance single action Its “big metaphors”—the hammer, the glowing sphere, the clear sense of front and back—give you all the tools you need to create your own rich reading.
Performers Amber McCartney and Jeffrey Watson perform a pas de deux that could be a struggle for power or a shared struggle for freedom, enlightenment, and more. They were purposeful, purposeful, gavel-wielding and passionate, like foot soldiers in a proletarian uprising. Maybe a crusader, or a hardy explorer. Or indeed the unintentional creator of an unpredictable and dangerous technology.
Strikingly, the choreography is dense and highly detailed, with intricate punctuation and wide sensual sweep. The dancers take turns colliding, uniting, and competing; when they hold a hammer in their hands, the movement takes on an almost industrial urgency. Yet as they move toward the seemingly inevitable action that will change their world, Gran deftly sidesteps, giving us some dance samples—a line that seems to have been cut from 1930s Broadway. , or Laurel & Hardy moves drawn from the farce of our collective unconscious. Human trajectories are rarely linear.
However, single action This is a work in two clearly divided phases. Action first, results later. (Reap what you sow. Be careful what you wish for.) As a result, the sounds and choreography also shifted, from electronic to classical, from rhythm to melody.
On the surface, it’s simple and clear. But underneath, it’s delightfully complex and evocative. While we can say this about almost any well-executed contemporary work, Gurin once again manages to fill in familiar frames in exciting ways. A clear vision and technical discipline help achieve this, but not at the expense of a willingness to engage and allow.
we have nothing to say single action This doesn’t read like a critic’s dialect, partly because we have so much stuff Can explain. What Gran and her team achieve through this work is to activate our own storytelling abilities and our reflexes of meaning. There’s a deep and quiet sense of satisfaction that comes when you see a work that reminds you why you love dance (and you have a thousand opinions about it).
Author: Paul Ransom Dance information.
