we unfold is firmly rooted in this fertile soil. Envisaged as a collaboration between Spanish-born choreographer Rafael Bonachela and Italian composer Ezio Bosso, it utilises Bosso’s Symphony No. 1, Oceans, for Cello and Orchestra, magnificently recorded by the Filarmonica ‘900 del Teatro Regio di Torino. This orchestra, composed of musicians from the lyric orchestra of the Teatro Regio, was founded in 2003 on the musicians’ own initiative, and since then has enhanced its work as a theatre orchestra by exploring a wide variety of modern music, especially through experimentation and fusion of classical music with trends in, for example, jazz, movie scores, and popular music. In five movements, the lush score examines the sea and our relationship to it in terms of the human journey. Leaving home, fear of the unknown, madness, loss, and finally, landfall are all touched upon in the choreography, which Bonchela instigated by asking the dancers to improvise – challenging, as he puts it, their willingness to unfold.
And challenge them it does. Oceans is a lengthy piece of music that must have challenged the orchestral players, too. At least they could record each movement separately! No such luck for the dancers, who crawled, squirmed, raced, somersaulted and cartwheeled their way around the stage for a solid hour. When a small group made an exit it was only for a costume change, not a rest. Before the show, I was wondering why the program was to be only one hour in length. Now I know. It was because to ask the dancers to essay a second work on the same night would have killed a few, put a few more on the injured list and gained Sydney Dance a bad rep with Alliance. If they gave dancers VCs they would all have earned one by the end of the season. But for the audience, the result was immersion in an ocean that ebbed, flowed, fountained and crashed its way through the human condition. Every human emotion was examined, explored, and accepted; every category of human movement was called into play to achieve this end.
The third major element in this collaboration is the work of video artist Daniel Askill. His projected moving backdrop of stars, with suns dying and being born, carried us, as he puts it, on “an archetypal journey … from the cosmos into a symbolic human narrative and back out into the stars”. Askill’s work lent the production an apocalyptic ambience that in combination with the tide of the music and the excitement of the choreography swept the audience along like froth on the waves of life itself. I came out of we unfold feeling shattered, elated, dead and reborn, all at once.
If I have any small quibbles, they have to do with the fact that the middle section of the work relied rather too heavily on the music and the visuals, with the dance sometimes seeming to be merely decoration, dwarfed by the magnificent garment to which it was pinned. Even so, this intrusiveness only marginally reduced my appreciation of this magnificent work.
It would be pointless to mention any one dancer by name, for this was so obviously a team effort. we unfold has already won two Green Room Awards for Best Female Dancer (Emily Amisano) and Music/Sound Composition (Ezio Bosso, composer and George Gorga, sound engineer). And last Sunday at the Australian Dance Awards in Brisbane, Rafael Bonachela took out the award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Choreography, while Sydney Dance Company Rehearsal Director and former dancer Amy Hollingsworth (originally from Perth) took out the award for Most Outstanding Female Dancer.
The Australian Dance Award is just one accolade among the many heaped on Bonachela. He served his apprenticeship with the Rambert Dance Company in the years of Richard Alston and Siobhan Davies, and the time he spent there must surely have honed his obvious gifts into the beginning of a great choreographic career. He has since set works on several major companies and countless performers including Kylie Minogue and members of the British So You Think You Can Dance team. He is still active with the London-based company that bears his name as well as being director of Sydney Dance Company.
As a proud Western Australian and WAAPA graduate, this reviewer now waves a flag that says “Eastern States eat your heart out! Nearly half the fifteen members of SDC are WAAPA trained!”
Floreat Bonachela and SDC!
Rating: Four and half stars
Sydney Dance Company presents
we unfold
Choreographer: Rafael Bonachela
Composer: Ezio Bosso
Video Art: Daniel Askill
Costume Design: Jordan Askill
Lighting Design: Hugh Taranto
Lighting reproduced by: Adam Iuston
Rehearsal Director: Amy Hollingsworth
His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
July 27 – 30
Albany Entertainment Centre
August 3
Bunbury Entertainment Centre
August 6
