Identity

A great theme of cultural transfer and intergenerational artistry links these very different premieres in this double bill, perfectly entitled Identity.

Celebrating 60 years of the Australian Ballet, resident choreographer Alice Topp creates a  thrilling scrapbook – a Paragon - of vignettes with current and past star dancers. 

Identity though begins with The Hum, a collaboration with six dancers from the Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide and 13 from the AB, about communities and artists passing on shared knowledge through the last 60,000 years.  

ADT artistic director Daniel Riley, a Wiradjuri man from northern NSW, is interested not in classical precision but the songs of landscape and rhythm of breathing. Yet he’s forged an ensemble so cohesive it’s impossible to see which dancer comes from where.

Onstage these dancers of The Hum breathe through an elemental landscape of hills, under a huge shifting moon pulsating with energy, circled in light with a tail of fire (set and lit by Matthew Adey), and costumed in attractive loose natural fibres patched with leaves of colour (Annette Sax).

The star though is the surging symphony by First Nations soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, drawing focus expressively through each orchestral instrument, but always driving on, especially with the extra energetic conducting by Nicolette Fraillon, the composer’s wife.  Riley’s choreography has moments of theatrical and earthy invention but too often resorts to a swirling arms-in-the air repetition, unmatched to the score’s musical variety.

The score for Paragon by Sydney-based Christopher Gordon builds a similar excitement with its lush Gershwin, American musical style.  Topp’s choreography mostly for couples, sometimes small groups, is on Jon Buswell’s luxurious long drape and back wall beautifully backgrounded by projections of old posters and images of AB past. 

Watching the obvious joy and happy stretch of the older stars was a real pleasure, not always expressed by classical dancers, especially as the beaming Fiona Tonkin leapt from the seemingly ever-taller principal artist Adam Bull, and Madelaine Eastoe fell into the arms of senior artist Marcus Morelli. 

Topp artfully segues each feature into the next like a dream; former Spartacus star Steven Heathcote did a turn; and former Ballet AD David McAllister took to the stage. As did Sarah Peace, Paul Knobloch, Lucinda Dunn and more.

By the end the stage shifted into a studio, with all the dancers, old and new, democratically working the bar.  Their beaming delight in an art form bigger than them was infectious.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Daniel Boud