Vertigo Dance Company: Mana, Brisbane Festival

Vertigo Dance Company: Mana -
Brisbane Powerhouse, 19 September -

Often the trick with program notes for contemporary dance is to say just enough to allow the audience a way in to the work. Say too little, or nothing at all, and the audience can sometimes be left floundering; say too much and the audience is then inevitably going to search for confirmation of the written text within the work. With Vertigo Dance Company’s Mana the latter was the case. To see the work described in a rather dense exposition, as “an ontological postmodern contemplation of the essence of dance and existence,” I must confess was, after a long day, challenging.

Mana, translated from the Aramaic, means vessel of light. Noa Wertheim, choreographer and Artistic Director of Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company asks, which comes first, darkness or light, and proposes Mana as a philosophical and mystical journey between these two opposites, where the movement itself tries to decode these and other more physical dichotomies, such as the linear and the round, the masculine and the feminine, inside and outside, and freedom and confinement.

The colour palette for Mana is monochromatic with its performance space demarcated in creamy white. All entrances and exits are made through the wide central doorway of the two-dimensional silhouette of a house (also white) with angled roof, which spans the back of the space.

The nine barefooted dancers wear long, loose flowing skirts or culottes and jackets in shades of black and brown, evoking traditional Hasidic dress; scarves initially cover the women’s heads.

Beginning with a lone male dancer lit by a single overhead spot, Mana develops into what is fundamentally a series of solos, duets, trios and ensemble pieces loosely tied together by the movement down and up, (and later diagonally across) the space by the house and its door, effectively rendering the ‘outside’ ‘inside’, and vice versa.

Only white light, predominantly from overhead, is used, which, with the brown and black costuming, makes the work visually quite sombre.

However, it is the movement itself that holds the interest in Mana, realised after several minutes of trying unsuccessfully to marry the work to its exegesis; the physical context is less important.

With a folk dance reference in its construction and a sense of the ritual, circles, double and single file ‘conga line’ patterning and traditional dance rhythms are set to Ran Bagno’s beautiful score, which is predominantly in three-quarter time.

The movement also uses the triplet as a starting point from whence it develops in both intricacy and breadth, including sweeping pas de basques into supported, arching grand jetés. In one section a brief musical nod to the Israeli folk song “Hava Nagila” supports the movement as it builds.

Wertheim grounds the movement with strong lunges in fourth and second position at the same time creating a sense of freedom and lightness with broad, gestural movement that weaves around this anchored centre. Broad leaps, both fluid and suspended develop this sense of lightness further.

Only the female dancers gradually reveal more of themselves with a discarding of outer clothing, allowing a better appreciation of shape and line. The entrance of one particularly statuesque, long-legged dancer, walking on high demi-pointe with a large black, helium filled balloon suspended high above her shoulders on a long string, makes another eloquent evocation of suspension and lightness.

There is little emotional projection in Mana except for one charming sequence when a sole female is carried high on the shoulders of the men, and showing a contained joy is tossed and promenaded across the space.

Undoubtedly the key to unpacking this work lies predominantly in the movement, performed with such ease and assurance by the Vertigo dancers. Another viewing would no doubt deliver further welcome insight.

– DENISE RICHARDSON