She’s got the moves! Louise Bezzina’s parting gift to Brisbane Festival
Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina’s parting gift is a stellar dance program led by the internationally acclaimed L.A. Dance Project.
A program packed with world and state premieres is set to keep audience members’ dance cards full during this year’s Brisbane Festival – literally.
Crowning a line-up of commissions and collaborations featuring leading Australian movement-makers is an international first, 12 years in the making – the three facets of L.A. Dance Project’s Gems performed as a complete piece with live music at QPAC’s Playhouse, September 4-7.
The Gems trilogy began in 2013 as a contemporary counterpoint to George Balanchine’s iconic 1967 triptych Jewels, commissioned, like the original, by luxury house Van Cleef & Arpels.
The work’s 10-carat pedigree goes beyond these illustrious origins though, as choreographer and LADP founder Benjamin Millepied is globally recognised by dance aficionados for his former roles as a New York City Ballet principal and director of the Paris Opera Ballet – and his contribution to the film Black Swan.
Performing in and choreographing the Hollywood hit – and his subsequent marriage to onscreen partner Natalie Portman – gave the French-born, American-trained artist a rare mainstream platform to reach a lay audience, and more recently he created the movie Dune: Part One & Part Two’s “sandwalk”. One can hope that that crossover might spark curiosity among this viewing sector to see Gems.
Despite the influence of his NYCB connection with its legendary director Balanchine, Millepied has commented that only the energy associated with each gemstone in Jewels informed his choreography. There are no pointe shoes or tutus in LADP’s contemporary ballet.
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Each of the series – Reflections (2013), Hearts & Arrows (2014) and On the Other Side (2016) – was shaped by an ethos of making dance representing its moment in time and place, shaped in the image of Los Angeles.
They featured cross-artform collaborations with diverse American voices including conceptual visual artist Barbara Kruger, composer David Lang and Compton street artist Mark Bradford, and the timeless music of Philip Glass.
A bonus coming from Millepied’s contemporary focus in undertaking the novel process of juxtaposing the pieces is that Gems will deliver a fresh take on its components.
“I will spend some time rewriting all three pieces,” he told Limelight Magazine earlier this month. “It’s about making sure that in every moment of the piece, you are connecting to the music in a way that finds even more life in it.
“I hear music differently now, and so I think I choreograph differently. I was experimenting a lot when I made [Reflections, set to Lang’s commissioned score] and I was trying different things, so there’s a chance to inhabit that world a bit differently now.”
Facilitating this revision is a “marvellous” dance troupe of mostly long-term collaborators who understand what he wants. And beyond the steps, that is to make people feel.
Dance offers an antidote to the desensitisation produced by the information-overload of our technologically driven world, the 48-year-old Millepied believes, helping people reconnect with emotions and enabling them to feel empathy.
Gems, he has observed, is “an emotional journey with a strong and hopeful sense of lasting love and community, amidst the uncertainty in which we live”.
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Similarly, Brisbane Festival’s other dance works explore the human condition in varying ways.
The nexus between technology, nature and each other is also at the heart of Australasian Dance Collective’s collaboration with The Netherlands’ Club Guy & Roni, Bad Nature.
Six artists from each company perform alongside musicians from HIIT and an Australian percussionist in this ambitious world premiere that also incorporates cutting-edge multisensory design and couture. The 60-minute production promises to highlight the best and worst of humanity when it transforms The Powerhouse Theatre, September 3-7.
Netherlands creatives are also behind Elements of Freestyle, a collision between urban arts, sport and music driven by ISH Dance Collective. Whatever’s on or under your feet, it’s all dance to ISH, who fuse breakdancing, inline skating, skateboarding, freestyle basketball, BMX and free-running to create their own brand of poetry in motion. See it for the first time in Queensland at The Powerhouse Theatre, September 24-27.
Another bespoke world first is Stephanie Lake Company’s The Chronicles, set to take audiences from cradle to grave in 70 minutes. Ranging from delicate and minute to explosively dynamic, this exploration of the life cycle and the inevitability of change is propelled by Robin Fox’s electro-acoustic score. Driving rhythms are offset by the vocals of singer Oliver Mann and Voices of Birralee Children’s Choir, who perform onstage with the 12 contemporary dancers in the Talbot Theatre, Thomas Dixon Centre, West, End, September 10-13.
First Nations’ artists contribute a further two global premieres and two Queensland debuts. Celebrated choreographer Stephen Page is returning home with Baleen Moondjan, a spectacle set among giant whale bones floating on the Brisbane River.
Drawing inspiration from a story told by his grandmother, the former Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director has reteamed with long-time collaborators designer Jacob Nash, co-writer Alana Valentine, composer Steve Francis, costume designer Jennifer Irwin and lighting designer Damien Cooper to realise this celebration of relationships between baleen whales and indigenous communities’ totemic systems. This state premiere season takes place at The Landing, Queen’s Wharf, September 18-21.
Esteemed artists Marilyn Miller, Jasmin Sheppard and Katina Olsen embody the voices of their communities on their Country in the Queensland premiere season of Preparing Ground. Developed together over six years, the 60- minute work playing Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, September 5-7, navigates between past and present, tradition and disruption, inviting viewers to bear witness and join an urgent call to action for First Peoples’ care of land in our shared future.
Unveiling Shadows offers a solo perspective of contemporary identity through the journey of young First Nations-Italian performer Joshua Taliani and his struggles to forge his own path through queerness and generational trauma. Created with co-director Wanida Serce, its world debut is at Metro Arts’ New Benner Theatre, September 10-13.
Bangarra Dance Theatre, former company member Yolande Brown and Chenoa Deemal have created a world-first work for primary school-aged children. The Bogong’s Song: a call to Country blends dance, song and shadow puppetry to tell the story of a fantastical dream world.
This impressive smorgasbord curated by outgoing artistic director Louise Bezzina should sate almost all tastes and appetites.