Wet Hard Long is, without a doubt, a bold risk-taking piece of contemporary dance with so much polish it blinds. It’s a work that leaves its audience spellbound, for everything about it just feels correct, everything.
Wet Hard Long is the second full-length incarnation of this performance, with its original version, then titled Wet Hard, nabbing the People’s Choice Award at the 2022 Keir Choreographic Awards.
The work was created by performer, choreographer and director Jenni Large, who is joined on stage by fellow dancer Amber McCartney. The energy between both dancers is palpable. Wet Hard Long‘s early sinewy choreography – mostly floor work – in later scenes gives way to more powerful and emotive sections.
Large and McCartney don matching costumes designed by Michelle Boyde, which feature bejewelled gloves that glisten under the stage lights like droplets of water. Both dancers are kitted out in eight-inch chrome Pleaser heels. The aesthetics feel expensive.
As much as Wet Hard Long successfully disrupts the patriarchal male gaze and subvert the paradigm, this is no strip show. Part of its power is the way in which it reinvents the wheel. These heels are not just heels; they act as a natural extension to the body. For a contemporary dance piece to work so effectively with them is a class act; in early scenes heels are even used to tip buckets of water over the dancers’ bodies and the stage.
The shoes are also used in other sections of precarious physicality. In later scenes both Large and McCartney climb and drape themselves across the sole stage piece – sculptural monkey bars, fabricated by Jemima Lucas.
Sound design by composer Anna Whitaker and lighting design by Adelaide Harney round out this sumptuous experience.
Recently, ArtsHub engaged with Justin Shoulder’s Anito that was part of RISING’s 2024 program, describing that work as ‘post queer’. Wet Hard Long sits within the same canon. All the elements of a queer dance work are here – but to describe it as such would be similarly reductive. We can only hope that the presentation of these two very similar works so close together marks the start of a new trend in contemporary dance practice.
Creating any performance work requires a certain level of attention towards making the audience feel safe. In a performance that works with such dangerous elements as dancing in eight-inch heels on a flooded stage, an even greater level of attention is required. In Wet Hard Long, Large manages this so well that it never feels unsafe, but rather leads to edge-of-the-seat excitement.
If this show is a barometer for the health of Melbourne’s independent dance sector, then it has most certainly recovered from the lockdown challenges of the COVID period.
Read: Theatre review: Dracula, Roslyn Packer Theatre
Its quality, aesthetic and polish are so strong that this reviewer immediately booked tickets to see Wet Hard Long a second time. In over a decade of reviewing, this is the best dance performance I have ever seen. This show is ready to tour and would stand tall being programmed by a major arts festival anywhere in the world.Â
Wet Long Hard by Jenni Large
Sylvia Staehli Theatre, Dancehouse, Melbourne
Choreographer, Director and Performer:Â Jenni Large
Collaborating Performer:Â Amber McCartney
Composer:Â Anna Whitaker
Lighting Designer:Â Adelaide Harney
Costume Designer:Â Michelle Boyde
Sculptural Fabricator:Â Jemima Lucas
Dramaturg:Â Ashleigh Musk
Curator:Â P Eldridge
Understudy:Â Nikki Tarling
Tickets: $20-$45
Wet Hard Long will be performed until 13 July 2024.
