Scooped out among the undergrowth
PIECES 2024
20-minute performances commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc and UMAC
Thursday 28th November, 2024
Union Theatre, Arts & Cultural Building, The University of Melbourne
Seven dances for two people
Choreographer: Tra Mi Dinh
Dancers: Tra Mi Dinh, Rachel Coulson
Composer: Tilman Robinson
Lighting Designer: Rachel Lee
Costume Designer: Geoffrey Watson
Swallow
Choreographer and Performer: Joel Bray
Composer and Performer: Marco Cher-Gibard
Lighting Designer: Rachel Lee
“OK, bye!”
Choreographer: Alisdair Macindoe, in collaboration with the dancers
Sound Designer, Instrument Designer, and Composer: Alisdair Macindoe
Harpist (Recorded) and Composer: xanya mamunya
Dancers: Geoffrey Watson, Rachel Coulson
Lighting Designer: Rachel Lee
Piece by Piece, my response to Lucy Guerin Inc’s PIECES with choreography by Tra Mi Dinh, Joel Bray, and Alisdair Macindoe, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
Like two cicadas advancing, springing instep with each other, Tra Mi Dinh and Rachel Coulson manifest from the shadows of the deep stage of the new Union Theatre. Seven dances for two people, the first of three works presented as part of Lucy Guerin Inc’s Pieces, in a new collaboration with University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC), summons a world beyond as the framework of the theatre falls away, or so it feels from my vantage in the stalls on opening night. Lightly, as if winged, in Dinh’s Seven dances for two people, there may be two, but it seems a familiar buzzing chorus at the end of a hot day. A loud, buzzing chorus of cicadas to signal a united front to predators; an orchestral deterrent clicking, perhaps there is more.
More there certainly is, in the revelation of the unquiet world. As if resting in a space, scooped out among the undergrowth, shrouded in (stage) mist, the sense of more than my eyes can detect, between shadow and substance. In costumes designed by Geoffrey Watson, oversized sheer short-sleeved dresses layered atop a simple black body, the suggestion of the four transparent wings of the cicada’s form, to me, is enhanced. The silhouette — a boxy triangle for a body, two rectangles at the shoulders — reminiscent of a two-dimensional drawing of a dress and yet also ethereal, lends a ghost-like air to the newly hatched beguilement. From first position relevés, Dinh and Coulson tilt to the side, hand in hand, and prove hypnotic. Prime number seven, referenced in the work’s title, informs the rhythmic structure of the various sequences, the number of times a pas de bourée or demi plié is executed, and even, possibly, as Dinh and Coulson trace the stage in unison, the diagonal tail of the number 7 when written as a numeral. Melding fluid movements with articulated, as Dinh explains, “caught up in the sacred repetition of this insistent symbol, this duet unveil[s] itself as a reverent meditation to the number 7.[i]”
Overhead, at the work’s own tail, though the exact location remains hidden, voices are heard throughout the theatre in Tilman Robinson’s composition. In the rumble-mumble aural awareness, ballet joins an upright Irish jig, by way of the art of soccer as two players interweave, in an atmospheric work that appears to vanish as soon as it begun. Seven, be it lucky, be it magnificent, be it Pythagorean numerology’s spiritual, or a synchronised emergence of cicadas on the acoustic horizon. Fleeting and fantastical, the incomprehensible world is made visible.
In the continuation of sound shaping my perception of space, joining the “Pieces” line-up, Lucy Guerin Inc’s annual artist development program affording choreographers the opportunity to create a new 20-minute work, is Joel Bray’s Swallow and Alisdair Macindoe’s “OK, bye!”. Bray’s answer to the provocation “Do you swallow?” toys with word play and double meanings, with the Swallow also being a reference to the Welcome Swallow, Bray’s totem. Known as Yirribin in Wiradjuri, as Bray explains, “no matter where I am, she’ll find me and swoop in to say hello.”[ii] When Bray, together on the stage with composer Marco Cher-Gibard, removes his own top, but leaves it still upon his shoulders, having threaded his head through to reveal his chest, he ripples his arms in part classic ballet swan meets energetic, swift Yirribin.
Elsewhere, as a silhouette, legs crossed like the forked tail of the Yirribin, with his cast-off clothes for wings, hanging from his outstretched arms, there is a sense of the playful birds Bray earlier described “swooping through the naked limbs of the tree”. Yirribin are “flirty and flitty and constantly on the move... I looked at them and thought, they’re not breeding, they’re not feeding, they’re just playing. They were dancing.[iii]” Which, as Bray, having cast off all his clothes, and having straddled Cher-Gibard’s guitar, is doing. Dancing, flirty and flitty.
I cannot find cicadas and swallows and not remain in the animal world, and so, in Alisdair Macindoe’s “OK, bye!”, dedicated to his mother, xanya mamunya, with drums fashioned to their backs, Coulson (once more) and Watson (this time on the stage) remind me momentarily of two snails. Or perhaps two molluscs who, with no external shells of their own, are now in possession of drum-shells for protection. For this final duet, we return to in unison, and as Coulson and Watson raise their fuzzy mallets, antennae are drawn. Antennae are raised to read the world, to smell, taste, and see. But these inkblot antennae are not for the striking of the drum’s surface, but for touch of a different kind. As they are tossed overhead to the wings, they land with a pleasing, well-timed clatter-tap-tap in a gesture of “coming to terms with the inevitable end of things. It is an expression of what it might feel like to let go—with levity, preparedness, and love.[iv]”
There is, of course, a second equally captivating duet within the funeral march giving shape to the sound of “OK, bye!” and that is between the acoustic instruments played by robots built by Macindoe and mamunya, whose (recorded) harp playing sparkles like moonlight’s silver trail. In their third collaboration, with both as composers, the aural connection is palpable. As a small piano descends from above, its size belies its magnetism. It gives external form to a murmur.
The solenoid taps the bass drum, the lights come on. Make preparations, the fable, the warning. Find your shell. Your wings. Your levity.
[i] Tra Mi Dinh, Seven dances for two people synopsis, Pieces 2024 program, https://www.umac.melbourne/media/pages/whats-on/pieces-2024/7fa003d039-1732764215/pieces-2024-production-program.pdf, p. 7, accessed 29th November, 2024.
[ii] Joel Bray, Swallow synopsis, Pieces 2024 program, p. 4, accessed 29th November, 2024.
[iii] Joel Bray, Ceremony Artist Statement, National Gallery of Australia, https://nga.gov.au/publications/ceremony/joel-bray, accessed 29th November, 2024.
[iv] Alisdair Macindoe, “OK, bye!” synopsis, Pieces 2024 program, p. 10, accessed 29th November, 2024.
Image credit: Tra Mi Dinh and Rachel Coulson in Seven dances for two people, by Gregory Lorenzutti
