Tree of Codes

The kaleidoscopic impact of London wunderkind Wayne McGregor’s dance epic Tree of Codes even fills the cavernous theatre space in Sydney’s new International Convention Centre.  It comes to the Sydney Festival from Melbourne’s last October.

Colours and spots beam constantly into the audience, with angled onstage mirrors reflecting us back on ourselves, and transforming the near-naked dancers into a chorus line of multiple versions.  Olafur Eliasson’s ever shifting architectural installations fracture the light and slice the action with huge coloured frames.

Music producer Jamie xx keeps up with a soaring score travelling from a community of handclapping through a range of individual instruments – treble piano, strings, percussion – backed with voice echoes, all synthesized to the max. 

And the dancing? The dozen dancers of Company Wayne McGregor are beautifully poised and agile, classically erect one moment, rubber limbed and frenzied the next. 

As for meaning, McGregor takes his text from Jonathan Safran Foer’s sliced up version of a 1936 collection of short stories by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles.  So the dance, Tree of Codes (itself a cut up of the original title), is indecipherable, more a deconstructionist’s picnic.

While chorographically inventive, with its rushes of duos and trios, and chattering of arms, there is no pause, no punctuation, for reflection or feeling or meaning.  This is not to deny McGregor’s seductive theatricality, his even joyous circus of thrills, but the impact evaporates in the dark.

Sydney Festival must agree; they don’t bother to supply a program or even production details. 

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton