Well, the Ballet has been in town and here I am, disappointed as ever. Am I really surprised? No. Am I upset? Yes, but only because ‘BodyTorque’, the Ballet’s annual program for the company’s emerging choreographers, confirms existing expectations – and I have a fear of low expectations.
I am unwilling and afraid to shit on a piece before I’ve seen it. Been there, done that – not healthy. Obviously you still carry some prior understandings, but you have to try to switch it off eventually in the pursuit of true omnivorousness.
I know my perfunctory and crass introduction seems too strong a reaction for works by young artists. I know that my contemporaries and I are still learning, and that the things we do now will long be forgotten by the time we emerge as somewhat lucid beings 15 years down the track – we will redefine ourselves.
But the choice to partake in tradition and/or find new terrain is always available, and all I want to see is commitment to the cause. This is perennially the Ballet’s quandary – there is a vital missing charge to their undertakings, such that every new project whether remount or new production feels in the end rotund and slothful. Perhaps they have a management issue? Or maybe, they’re just too comfortable.
Whatever it is, the same tone played out in ‘BodyTorque’. A few great moments, mostly a sensual duet for two men and a Vivienne Wong solo in Alice Topp’s ‘Same Vein’, but otherwise it was show tricks, old-school frontalism and an utterly bonkers joke-piece by Tim Harbour.
Largely, the works were oriented towards technique or narrative, though mostly the former. There were a few real whoppers – over the shoulder manhandling that would make Steve Paxton cringe, and manic faces smiling with total un-ambiguity. Alice’s work was separated by its contemporary approach to emotion, flexibility and weight – the dancers could really bend and the virtuosity was yogic. It wasn’t perfectly executed, but it didn’t matter – her authentic approach has clearly created lasting relationships between the dancers in the piece: her work was a real shared experience with them and the audience. And I was pretty turned on by the duet. Just saying, it was really affirming stuff.
If I call the marker of a good night at the theater demonstrated commitment, and I do, then Alice’s work was it. It’s a simple idea – that art work would commit itself to human experience, and the revelation of our own humanity even if it just comes in glimpses.
Wally Cardona, a choreographer from NYC, talks a little too much about philosophers for my taste, but has something nice to say on this idea. He sort-of nicked it from Kierkegaard, but nowadays it’s mostly an idea from history and Wally’s own work – the idea that performance is a phenomena (duh), but also that on a stage where there is an abundance of life (something that is multiple viewpoints, many people coming and going, different viewpoints, an area in a moment of time that teams with life) the people who are involved in that phenomena and are that phenomena have an experience that offers them a perspective on experience itself – and therefore allows them to find something usable for the rest of their life.
What I feel the Ballet constantly fails to offer, both its audience and clearly by the measure of ‘BodyTorque’, its company members, is an authentic human experience. And what I am upset by is the misanthropy of their shows.
You can take that how you like.
I want more from the Ballet, and I want to shy away from this feeling that I am only subjected in an evening of physicality, movement and human potential. That cavernous State Theater, that space I have seen filled with the wonder and miasmatic hypnotism of Philip Glass, the thrumming of 43 Manganiar musicians, the sorrow of Pagliacci etc., can be so much more, can be fuller and more determined to have something to do and say.
Until the point that the Ballet offers more than just a trickle of human experience to moisten the stage, I will remain fearful of not seeing human potential in their dance, and I will continue to be negatively gratified.
Body Torque program information:http://www.australianballet.com.au/bodytorque
