In his program notes, Artistic Director Phillip Adams calls his latest work Miracle a response to Amplification – a work he created ten years ago (Amplification was also the first work Phillip Adams choreographed on his return from New York to Australia.)
“Miracle” he says, “is an emotionally challenging narration of iconic themes, embedded within religious myths of modern day cults.” This is Phillip Adams tenth work for BalletLab, which is fitting, because the company is also celebrating ten years in the business of creating the most challenging and compelling contemporary dance currently around in our neck of the woods. And Miracle does not let devotees of BalletLab’s gripping productions down.
Miracle is simultaneously riveting, bewildering, mesmerizing and ear-piercing! As Australian Ballet Artistic Director David McCallister said on opening night after announcing the forthcoming collaboration the Australian Ballet and BalletLab are set to enter into in 2010, you’re not exactly sure what to think of Phillip Adams work as you watch it, but in the end you just love it.
With two industrial stage lights as the main setting on the stage and a series of microphones descending carefully from the ceiling to capture the shattering incantations of the dancers (yes they do scream) as they spiral from hallucinogenic states to crushed submission to acquiescence to serenity, the audience is captured immediately. Whether this is willingly I am not sure. I remember clenching my jaw throughout the hour-long performance, but not because the work caused me pain, the opposite in fact. I felt completely immersed, enthralled – overcome even. I also felt frozen under the spell of this amazingly sensory experience.
Why? I have been thinking about that a bit since Wednesday night’s premier and my cranial bones start to unlock. For something that stands outside of the traditional form of dance, Miracle actually has a strong narrative element that makes perfect sense. The ease with which Phillip Adam’s is able to deconstruct the particularly emotive, unruly and layered issue that is religion and create a dance work that far from being difficult to decipher is richly transparent, makes the resulting work absolutely accessible (not often the case with any avant garde production).
Much will be said about this work. It is a corporeal experience that engages so many aspects of the audiences own senses, and I am loathe to attempt a methodical deconstruction of something so impressively symbolic of the type of work that makes (or should make – if funding comes its way) BalletLab sit at the heart of the Australian contemporary dance scene.
BalletLab, Miracle, Arts House Meat Market, Melbourne, July 15-19
Choreography and Direction: Phillip Adams
Composers: David Chisholm and Myles Mumford
Dancers: Luke George, Kyle Kremerskothen, Clair Peters and Brooke Stamp
Costume Design: Toni Matičevski
Lighting Design: Bluebottle
www.balletlab.com
Part of State of Design Festival, July 15-25,www.stateofdesign.com.au
