It is a fine line between avant-garde and pretentious twaddle and Australasian Dance Collective straddles that line in its latest offering.
THREE, which is on at Brisbane Powerhouse until July 18, is a mixture of safer choices but with a core work that will likely divide audiences. Which side of the fine line does Cuddle by Harrison Ritchie-Jones fall on? That is very much for you to decide.
This core work required reconfiguring the theatre and crowding the audience around a central stage that seemed more like a wrestling ring – and that’s appropriate because the performance was more like wrestling or an extended judo session than dance.
The ADC website promises that “Brisbane audiences will … experience extraordinary guest artist Harrison Ritchie-Jones in his acclaimed Cuddle, performed with Michaela Tancheff. This high-octane encounter pulses with absurdity, humour and fierce physicality, drawing audiences into an immersive world of sound and vision unlike anything they’ve experienced before”.
Well, it’s certainly unlike anything I have ever seen before and that statement is a double-edged sword. The piece features the two artists wearing balaclavas. They roll into the theatre from a pier outside (this is seen on a screen above the stage) and then spend half an hour basically wrestling, a bout which is punctuated by some absurdist theatrics including spoken word elements by way of voice modulation through two handheld mics.
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The voices sound like, well, Darth Vader or Satan, I’m not sure which exactly. Maybe both. I should mention that latex chickens with built-in squeakers were used in this show, just in case you wonder where the squeaking came from. Just saying.
Personally, I found it a bit creepy but most of the audience seemed to get into it.
I guess full marks to ADC’s artistic director Amy Hollingsworth for pushing the envelope yet again. She likes doing this and sometimes does it brilliantly. Last year’s Brisbane Festival offering, Bad Nature, a collaboration with Dutch company Club Guy & Roni, was brilliant.
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THREE is a signature annual triple-bill affair. The first work Maarung by Joel Gray was more like core business.
“Bray’s choreography is human, witty and deeply moving – inviting deep connection and reflection on identity,” states ADC’s website, and I would agree. I particularly loved Louise Frere-Harvey’s soundscape, which featured some beautiful notes of birdsong. This is the opening work of THREE, which doesn’t quite set you up at all for what’s to come with Cuddle.
The last piece is by Amber McCartney with a soundscape by composer Alister Macindoe. It’s a highly physical and compelling new commission. The bookends of this iteration of THREE exemplify what contemporary dance is all about and they show this accomplished company doing what they do best.
The problem for me is the filling in the middle of this cake. Cuddle will be, I think, quite polarising and it’s risky business. Introducing the production, Amy Hollingsworth did say she was taking the audience on an “adventure”.
Be prepared for this, though, because it takes a while getting everyone back in the theatre through a single entrance after a very long interval that is required to reorganise the theatre. Then everyone has to file out and wait while they put it all back together, so the advertised two hours timeslot turns out to be closer to three hours.
In her introduction in the show’s program Hollingsworth says: “I hope tonight reminds us why we gather in theatres. To be surprised. To laugh. To reflect. To be moved. To be reminded of what it means to be human. To leave feeling more enlivened that when we arrive.”
Whether you are “enlivened” by this program or not is entirely up to you.
Australasian Dance Collective’s THREE – McCartney / Ritchie-Jones / Bray – continues at Brisbane Powerhouse until July 18.
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