Frame of Mind & Quintett

Frame of Mind & Quintett
Rafael Bonachela & William Forsythe. Sydney Dance Company. Southbank Theatre (Vic). 6-16th May, 2015

What a glorious treat to see the Sydney Dance Company in the appropriately sized Sumner Theatre. Whilst classical ballet remains rigidly connected to its roots, contemporary dance continues to evolve in ways we wouldn’t have imagined when the SDC captured our imaginations some 40 years ago.

It’s been a long road for the company to acquire the rights to the great William Forsythe’s Quintett – a last love letter to his dying wife; but it’s been worth the wait. There is no sense of melancholy or sadness in this work inspired by personal tragedy. It is breathtakingly lyrical and romantic – like a mellifluous Angel’s sigh. And yet the extreme physicality, the delicate transference of weight in lifts I have never seen before, the precarious balance (in moves where bodies crashing to the stage seems inevitable, so stretched is the physical centre of gravity) as dancers create body patterns that are both un-natural and super-natural, all show the amazing technique and preparedness of the five astonishing dancers.

Sam Young Wright is a head and shoulders taller than the rest of the company. It’s unusual to see a contemporary dancer towering above the others…yet his extension is quite extraordinary and he is incredibly dynamic.

Chloe Leong and David Mack are superbly paired and their partnering work is heartstopping….there is more beauty in one tableau move than in most entire art galleries. Jesse Scales is a pocket rocket who never lets her technique get in the way of the inner dynamo that fuels her dancing. Cass Mortimer Eipper shows amazing physical strength alongside whimsy and humour, and a superb talent for characterisation. This is contemporary dance at its best. The work pays homage to classical ballet and brilliantly blends the two styles at the same time marrying emotions – but it’s always a joyous thing. Gavin Bryars constant building of his arrangement to an old man’s 13 bar dirge “Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet” is subtle but powerful. This is truly an amazing 26 minutes of excellence in dance.

Those of us who may have wondered what would happen to SDC after the retirement of Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon need not have worried. They initiated us into the possibilities of contemporary dance, but current AD Rafael Bonachela has raised the bar (or perhaps the Barre) higher than one could have imagined since his appointment in 2009. In his ballet Frame Of Mind (having its world premiere) he has involved his dancers in the creation of a marvellous piece centred on the complexity of our inner emotions and the desire to express ourselves, often in two different ways at once. As Bonachela says,  “The impulse to feel, experience and understand a dance work in the theatre should be an individual one … when all explanations have been exhausted and you find yourself outside of definition but immersed in sensation – the only thing left is to feel.” It doesn’t matter if what we feel is different to Bonachela or the dancers themselves. What matters is that, in this quest for excellence that SDC takes us on, we are guided by feeling; by that fluttering of the heart, aching of the soul and total immersion of the senses to the exclusion of all intellect. The dancers are all impossibly good, and totally committed with every fibre of their being. With Ralph Myers set giving us an impossibly tall endless window, we truly feel we could be shaken loose like feathers and fly. This is magical theatre and manna for the spirit of every dance lover.

Coral Drouyn

Imges: Sydney Dance Company's Quintett featuring Chloe Leong and David Mack (top image) & Jesse Scales and Cass Mortimer Eipper (middle image), and Frame of Mind. Photographer: Peter Greig.

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