Verve

I’m never sure how much I will enjoy an evening of modern dance, even or perhaps especially when it comes from The Australian Ballet.  However, some of my favourite moments of contemporary dance have come from these programs.  Verve brings together three works that seem at once well matched and disparate.

The opening work Constant Variants, choreographed by Stephen Baynes and set to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Variations on a Rococo Theme’ delivers twenty minutes of powerful lifting by the male dancers.   Eight dancers start on stage and move smoothly to form constantly changing pairs and trios.  Ako Kondo was, as always, skilled and elegant and ably paired with Andrew Killian and Brett Simon. But the real star of Act I is solo cellist Teije Hylkema, because as beautiful as the dancing is, it’s the music which is the star here. The movement is lovely, the lifts are impressive but the whole piece is somehow lacking.

Act II is the world premiere of Aurum, choreographed by Coryphée Alice Topp. Set to the music of Ludovico Einaudi and wonderfully staged by Jon Buswell, Arum is the audiences chance to see three Principals. The first movement is transfixes the audience as the bodies of dancers wrap around each other, achieving a sense of innocence in pure white costumes. It is the second movement that elevates this piece and provides possible the strongest moment of the night. A pas de deux between Adam Bull and corp member Coco Mathieson is infused with so much passion and pain that there are moments where the audiences genuinely feels as if they shouldn’t be watching what is so clearly a passionate and heartbreaking battle of love and loss.  Bull, as always commands the stage. His performance almost eclipsing that of Mathieson.  When the two part, embrace, and part again there is such a sense of sadness that you know, just know, that hearts are breaking. In contrast to the passion of the second movement, but no less beautiful, Kevin Jackson and Leanne Stojmenov show us the more tender side of love in the fourth, before being rejoined on stage by the other ten dancers for a mostly lovely finale.  Coryphée Callum Linnane is a standout here, showing tremendous strength and dexterity.

The third Act of the program was by far the most disparate.  Choreographed by Tim Harbour, this was the 33^rd performance of the high octane Filigree and Shadow.  The music, by 48nord (Ulrich Muller and Siegfried Rossert) has a post apocalyptic feel, which was jarring following the first two acts. The pace of dance was frenetic. The set, designed by Kevin Ho was so vast that it gave an almost claustrophobic feel to the piece.  The pas de trois of Senior Artist Brett Chynoweth, Soloist Marcus Morelli and corp dancer Shaun Andrews was deftly performed and exhilarating.  Once again Callum Linnane draws your eye amongst the cacophony of distorted sound and the rapid movement on and off stage of the 12 dancers.  The problem with Filigree and Shadow was it just didn’t fit in this program, or perhaps not as the third act.

Not all modern is the same and the Australian Ballet shows this with Verve. There is a lot to love here in spite of some strange choices in putting the program together.

L.B.Bermingham

Photographer: Jeff Busby