2013: Rian co-produced by Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (Ireland) and Sadler’s Wells, London

                                                              Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Rian co-produced by Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (Ireland) and Sadler’s Wells, London.  Director and choreographer, Michael-Keegan-Dolan; Music Director, Liam Ó Maonlaí.  Sydney Festival at Theatre Royal, January 17-23, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 17

I rather wish that highly expert directors/choreographers, like Michael Keegan-Dolan, and equally highly expert musicians/composers, like Liam Ó Maonlaí, would refrain from writing deep and meaningful romantic guff in program notes.

Rian stands, or rather dances, sings and plays, on its own two feet, without the need for justifications like “We dance to be reunited with the creative core from which we came” or “Myth describes the marriage of heaven and Earth again and again.  And so it is.  The sun and the Earth give us life....”

And the audience on opening night stood, not just to applaud the artistic quality of this Irish based World Music and Dance creation, not even in simple response to the emotional ebb and flow, culminating in energy pouring off the stage, but even more in thanks to a company who drew us all into an understanding of community.  The externalised world of our “modern” society was gently, and often amusingly, put to one side to allow our imaginations the freedom to see the world differently.

Here am I, a critic, ironically of course, writing: Just do it; don’t write program notes to tell us beforehand what we are supposed to experience.

What isn’t explained in the program is the title ‘Rian’, meaning trace or mark, in Irish.  My Irish ancestors probably escaped their west coast poverty for the bright lights and industrial poverty of London about 250 years ago.  Watching Rian makes me regret the move and imagine what I might have become.  I don’t have the language, or even the pronunciation, but I do still have ‘Rian’ – the trace that made me enjoy playing Australian folk tunes on my mouth organ after the latest move of our family to this country, where the lilt and rhythm of Irish song and dance has been a major part of the culture since the days of the convicts, many of whom were political prisoners.

What Liam Ó Maonlaí has done is to explore the world beyond Ireland, with, in this show, a particular focus on Mali, seeking the musical connections with ancient traditions, while Michael Keegan-Dolan has found a choreographic style of movement using traditional elements of Irish dance as a basis for expression of the joy, the fun, the sadness, and the exuberance of the music. 

This is nothing like the commercialised simplicity of ‘Riverdance’.  This is art reflecting real life back to us, with a cast representing many different cultural backgrounds.  The traces are in their names: Saku Koistinen, Saju Hari, Keir Patrick, Hannes Langolf, Anna Kaszuba, Louise Mochia, Ino Riga and Louise Tanoto.

Rian is an exemplar of the best presentations for this international Festival, currently directed by Belgian-born Lieven Bertels.  Bryce Hallett has written that he is “bold, eclectic and surprising” and is “driven to connect with audiences in meaningful ways, with an unconventional approach that promises to add even more colour to Sydney Festival’s much-loved palette.”  Rian definitely fits the bill.

See http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/strength-in-diversity-20121025-286ja.html?skin=text-only for more from Bryce Hallett.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Urban by CIRCOLOMBIA

Urban by CIRCOLOMBIA.  Presented by Sydney Festival in association with Arts Projects Australia.  Artistic Director, Felicity Simpson; directed by Mark Storer; original theatre director, Jean-Yves Penafiel; Company Captain, José Henry Caycedo Cassierra.  Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, January 15-27, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 16

If you think of Circus Oz as quintessentially Australian (see my review of From the Ground Up in Canberra Critics’ Circle, October 5, 2012), then you can see Circolombia as playing a similar role for Colombia.  The origin of the company lies in the Foundation Circo Para Todos, founded by Felicity Simpson in Cali, Colombia in 1995; the establishment of a professional circus school specifically dedicated to underprivileged children; and its development into Circolombia producing shows and providing jobs for the graduates of Circo Para Todos – and spreading Columbian culture around the globe.

I contrasted From the Ground Up against the Cirque du Soleil as “no-bullshit Australian culture, which grabs our audience by the throat and makes us cheer the daredevils on, laugh, and be made aware of social justice all at once.  This is the art of Circus Oz”.  The same can be said of Circolombia in Urban.  Just change the culture.

Cali is a city very unlike Melbourne, and Colombia quite unlike Australia.  Before Urban gets the exciting daredevil circus action under way, while we wait for rather too many latecomers to be settled in their seats, a continuous video is shown taken through the back window of a bus on its route around Cali.  At a stop, a young boy – maybe 8 or 9 – jumps up on the rear bumper and hangs onto a rope, obviously permanently attached for people to travel on the outside.  Looking in, he notices the camera on the inside looking out, giving us the steady gaze of the already worldly-wise, rather than the cheeky grin of a child that we might expect.

The action begins with a white figure lying dormant in a dim spotlight, brought to life in stages by puffs of breath from a dark mysterious figure who disappears in the gloom.  The silvery white figure rises to find herself alone, leaving the stage apparently in search of something.  There is a pause, in blackout, then a great explosion of a dozen men, of racial backgrounds from almost effete whites in street-wise hip-hop gear, as you might see in New York, through to tall startlingly muscular Afro-Americans.  And they dance – do they ever dance! – to the ever-present reggae rhythm of South American hip-hop, in Spanish rhyme, with all the athleticism of that urban counter-culture.  Circus Oz looks rather sedate in comparison!

The men’s circus work was focussed on floor and tightrope tumbling and somersaulting, often up to heights where I was afraid they would hit the lighting rig, while the two women concentrated on aerial work.  I can’t tell from the program which of Diana Valentina Ramirez Londono and Julia Alejandra Sanchez Aja did which solo, but one was original, beautiful and scary on a high suspended ring and the other equally so on a slack rope trapeze which swung over the audience.  At least she was attached to a safety harness, but there was nothing to save the ring performer if she had come off  many metres above the stage.

As in Circus Oz, where Ghenoa Gela, a Torres Strait Islander from Rockhampton, told some of his story as an Indigenous person in Australia, we were told the story of poverty in Columbia by one of the men, whose Spanish name passed me by too quickly, but whose story was displayed in English on the screen, which was also used throughout the show as a backdrop.  Mind you, I didn’t often notice what was on the screen when people were flying through space, always with the threat of an injurious landing.

In the end, for me, Urban works because the danger and risk inherent in the circus represented the danger and risks that these performers grew up with in Cali, Colombia.  Here is where Urban diverged from Circus Oz.  From the Ground Up was an artistic metaphor with a highly positive view of multicultural Australian life.  I’m sure there must be aspects of Colombian culture which could be viewed in this light.  But Urban is about the underbelly of city life – which could also be shown about Melbourne, of course – and the endemic poverty out of which has grown the success, at least for these performers, of creating a show, as Felicity Simpson describes it, “at the forefront of a revolutionary new style of circus”.

And, to conclude, watch for the man (again whose name I can’t distinguish from the program) who gyrates as the hub of a large hoop, becoming a spinning and rolling human wheel.  This scene, his solo piece in the dance of life, almost in darkness as if the twirling of his body is an existential force, was not only powerful dramatically, but was so much more significant artistically than the equivalent physical exercise I have seen in Cirque du Soleil.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: School Dance by Matthew Whittet

L-R Amber McMahon, Matthew Whittet, Luke Smiles, Jonathon Oxlade

School Dance by Matthew Whittet.  Windmill Theatre (Adelaide) at Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, for Sydney Festival, directed by Rosemary Myers.  Composer, Luke Smiles; designer, Jonathon Oxlade; lighting, Richard Vabre; choreographer, Gabrielle Nankivell; animation, Chris More.  January 10 to February 3, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 15

I remember the 1980s.  My senior high school drama students began the decade still seeking the deep and meaningful within themselves in the final throes of 1970s ‘creative drama’.  By 1986 they were writing a new form of fantasy theatre, and wanted to be taught performance skills so they could show the stuff of their weird imaginations to the world.

And weird it is tonight indeed.  Here I am watching these drama students (not mine personally) a quarter of a century later putting all that learning and excitement, all those technical and acting skills that have become the assumed norm for the modern professional actor / dancer / singer / audio, lighting, stage and costume designer, on stage at the Wharf.  Wow!  It just so reminds me!

And, of course, I was also there, supervising the breathalyser machine at the door into the school social – the school dance – in the canteen.

The boys on their bikes

Since the writer, designer and composer also performed as the three boys at a school dance, about Year 9, and hardly prepossessing, there was every opportunity for nostalgia.  They even used their own names for their characters.  The images and sound are taken from the popular television and films they knew from their teenage days.  But what they have done is to create an original, whimsical, humorous and at times satirical fantasy about how a nerdy girl and boy become invisible, discover their attraction for each other and so become visible once more.

For a modern, young audience, the show works as an absurdist cartoon take-off of shows like High School Musical, while maintaining an integrity of understanding about teenage sexual attraction.  There is no Disney sentimentality here.

For the generation that these performers represent, now well into their thirties, the show is a light-hearted thoroughly enjoyable reflection on their younger days.

For an older generation again, such as mine, there is amusement in remembering that period, but in addition an awakening, or at least a re-awakening, to how social changes are encapsulated in the young, at the point of their breaking through into early adulthood.  And how each generation therefore has its own distinguishing character. 

To complete the cast, the boys need their menacing hulk nemesis, which Maori performer Jack Wetere creates wonderfully well – stopped in the end from destroying all, by Luke aiming the remote and pushing the pause button.

And, of course, they need a girl.  Amber McMahon justifiably was awarded an extra burst of applause tonight after playing all the necessary girls, invisible and visible, fantasy and real.  Her costumes were magnificent, and there was a palpable sense of amazement that she could get out of one and into another so quickly.

Choreography, and skilled dance and mime performance,  is the key to this show: several times tonight a dance sequence received spontaneous applause, as we might have responded to a jazz soloist or an operatic aria.

School Dance, then, is 75 minutes of thorough theatrical satisfaction – and you’ll be surprised to find yourself dancing out of the auditorium to an 80s beat.  The energy of this show is catching.

In the invisible world: Matthew Whittet, Amber McMahon as Danika

Amber McMahon as Joanie as the fantasy unicorn making an urgent phone call

 

Amber McMahon as Hannah Ellis

© Frank McKone, Canberra