Substation, Newport, Melbourne
Reviewed December 14
PIECES, the annual artist development program of choreographers commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc and The Substation, premiered on Wednesday night. Three choreographers had 20 minutes each to enthral the audience with a solo performed in the post-industrial hall of endless ceilings and tall heavy-curtained windows; it was a challenging space to fill.
Melanie Lane’s Into the Woods opened the evening with a piece exploring the ways in which witchcraft has been persecuted. Lane was costumed in a black skirt, which billowed with her movements like a dark storm cloud. Poetry and magic combined with a mystical soundtrack of bagpipes and spoken word to pull us into the depths of the occult.
The second offering of the night was Rachel Wisby’s Roses, a whimsical and enchanting sojourn into the world of 19th century ballet. The plinky piano music and bright morning lighting enhanced the saccharine yet doomed feeling of the piece as she whirled around the stage in an anti-ballet fashion, her head often in her arms or on the floor. Her sheer sky blue tulle and mustard skirt swayed behind her as she swept the floor with her body, and ran on tiptoes with dangling arms. The performance of these movements was perhaps a little protracted but the performance became more interesting as Wisby narrated a sci-fi version of the classical ballet Giselle, highlighting the ghostly and unnerving themes of madness and abuse. A particularly striking image from this soliloquy was of Giselle’s foot being crushed by Albrecht, seemingly echoing the brittleness of Wisby’s choreography.
The final performance of the night was the most provocative perhaps, flirting with and sometimes diving headlong into revulsion. Amber McCartney’s Tiny Infinite Deaths saw her creep artfully around the stage in a yellow, maggot-like suit, designed by Andrew Treloar, to an unnerving, distorted soundtrack by Makeda Zucco. Her bodily isolations and sinuosity were engrossing and intentionally disgusting in equal measure.
Ultimately, the three performances were a provocative arrangement that seemed to explore common themes of liminality and otherworldliness. There was skill and physical strength in each of the works that can only come from dedicated training. The recourse to fragility and disgust in each of the works reminded me of the infamous words attributed to street artist Banksy:
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”, with perhaps a little more pronounced a focus on the latter than the former.
– LEILA LOIS
'Pieces' ran from December 14 to 17.
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