Image: Dylan Sheridan in The Horse; photograph courtesy of Next Wave Festival.
Think of an old, abandoned sound stage still full of outdated costumes, gilt furniture and empty bird cages. Think of stumbling into this building and wandering around as if it’s your only chance to live out that Room of Requirement fantasy that you’ve been holding on to ever since you first read Harry Potter when you were ​13. Then sounds emanating from somewhere in distance and almost opaque lighting conjure ghosts in the shadows of this imagining. So begins The Horse. Unfortunately this sense of mystery and wonder dissipated and, despite returning occasionally, left more confusion and cognitive dissonance than the desire to explore.
The Horse is no musical performance in the ordinary sense. Rather it’s a performance of which music is one component. The theatricality of interplay between musicians and their surrounds was fascinating to begin with but as the stage and its players were more clearly revealed and it became evident that the musicians were determined to stick to their deadpan, objectified personas, the intrigue created by obfuscation and minimal composition was lost. The ghost in the machine, so beautifully intact in the opening movement, was shown not to be. It was as if the magician had explained how they performed their tricks.
There was a lot right with The Horse too. Its intent was clever and its ambitions bold. Dylan Sheridan has created some impressive instruments from the self-playing viola to his incandescent pipe gongs. His fellow performers were clearly skilled, not just musicians but performers too and his composition has some wonderful passages. There were even a few well-crafted jokes. The issue was that a cohesive force was missing. The Horse is described as an interstellar journey translating galactic data into something we can see and hear but just as with the cosmic battle between forces of attraction and repulsion, it was repulsive dark energy that triumphed. At the largest scale, separate elements were pulled apart faster than the information trying to traverse them could travel. If this was the intent then it was well achieved but sometimes a successfully achieved intent does not necessarily result in a successful performance.
It’s exciting to see composers engaging with forces and ideas at a cosmic scale and Sheridan, along with his collaborators certainly demonstrated the ability to make the journey but The Horse itself doesn’t quite get there. When exploring the frontiers, unsuccessful journeys are an inescapable part of pushing past them. The Horse has taken those bold first steps and with future iterations may go boldly where other performances have not gone before.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
The Horse
Director, Composer and Performer (Electronics): Dylan Sheridan
Saxophone: Benjamin Price
Violin: Emily Sheppard
Cello: Robert Manley
Arts House, North Melbourne
Next Wave Festival 2016
12 – 22 May 2016