DANCE
Horizon, Bangarra Dance Theatre ★★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, until September 7
This triple bill of new works is a tour from horizon to horizon, from the islands of the Torres Strait to Lake Taupo in New Zealand, featuring commissions by Sani Townson, Deborah Brown and Maori artist Moss Te Ururangi Patterson.
Choreographer Deborah Brown with dancers Amber Gordan, left, and Courtney Radford, right at a dress rehearsal ahead of Horizon. Credit: Eddie Jim
The evening begins with Kulka by Townson, a work reflecting on totem lore and the cultural heritage of Saibai Island. It has a busy, aerobic rhythm, with frequent group unison passages where simple lifts with trailing blue skirts recall rolling waves.
Townson’s choreography is complemented by – and sometimes in competition with – elaborate video designs projected onto the floor and reflected in a huge mirror. It’s a device that works best in the section dedicated to Koedalaw Awgadh, the crocodile god.
Brown also connects her piece, Salt Water, with the island culture of the Torres Strait. She focuses particularly on the western island of Badu and eastern island of Mer, from which she traces her ancestral lineage.
Like Townson’s piece, Salt Water has a steady, bustling energy. The highlight is its evocation of a submerged reef. Contorted bodies create an underwater vista, while small, jerky movements of the hands suggest the brittleness of coral skeletons.
A scene from The Light Inside as part of Horizon.Credit: Daniel Boud
The last section is a quicksilver solo by Lillian Banks in an eye-catching spangled costume designed by Jennifer Irwin: rapid pulsations in the arms and shoulders, bending and shifting, bring to mind the shimmer and flicker of a particularly bright star.
Moss Te Ururangi Patterson’s contribution, which takes inspiration from Maori spiritual traditions, is called Fresh Water: a companion piece to Brown’s Salt Water and part of a larger collaborative project called The Light Inside.
Patterson, who is the artistic director of New Zealand Dance Company, creates a number of special challenges for the Bangarra ensemble, placing a traditional haka in one of the sections and deploying forceful upper-body movements throughout.
Patterson’s choreography requires a level of concentration and intensity which the ensemble – with the notable exception of Kallum Goolagong – does not always achieve. And yet Fresh Water is still the most exciting of the three pieces because of its shadowy atmosphere and innovative use of tableaux.
Emily Flannery, Jye Uren and Chantelle Lee Lockhart in a fable about magic hair.Credit: Daniel Boud
The appearance of Emily Flannery, Chantelle Lee Lockhart and Jye Uren as sacred feminine presences in a representation of a fable about magic hair is particularly memorable.
While Horizon may not be as immersive or as consistently affecting as other Bangarra productions, as an expression of solidarity with the First Peoples of the Oceania region it nonetheless represents an important enlargement of the company’s core mission – and a new artistic frontier.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann
MUSIC
Orava Quartet ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, August 30
Probably the closest thing Australian chamber music has to a boy band is the Brisbane-based Orava Quartet. Sporting their trademark colourful socks, violinists Daniel Kowalik and David Dalseno, violist Thomas Chawner and cellist Karol Kowalik continued their convincing advocacy of new Australian music by giving the world premiere of Paul Dean’s String Quartet No. 2.
Orava Quartet is probably the closest thing Australian chamber music has to a boy band.
Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short poem A Dream Within A Dream, the work is cast in three movements. The first, labelled “fast, murky and troubled” opened with chimerical high strings pierced by shards of sound before projecting more cohesive yet turbulent textures.
Taking its name from Poe’s poem, the second movement came in four short scenes, one of which featured a heartfelt soliloquy from Chawner’s viola, followed by a reflective “prayer” in which the melding of the quartet’s mellow lower voices was particularly moving.
After working through references to the “pitiless wave” and the “roar” of Poe’s “surf-tormented shore”, the third movement “through my fingers to the deep” emerged as a meditation on the ephemeral nature of time and existence expressed in the poem, ending with short, soft breaths that confirmed the poet’s sentiments.
An effective and well-structured exploration of Poe’s theme, the music would have been given greater context had the poem been read beforehand.
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Seemingly ablaze with bright Mediterranean sunlight, Claude Debussy’s deservedly popular String Quartet in G minor proved the perfect contrast to the shadowy realm of dreams. Apart from the luxuriously languorous third movement, the work thrummed with bustling energy. Gathering pace and driving towards its knife-edge finish, the finale became a visceral musical force that could only be generated by an ensemble that had developed a deep inner rapport.
A laid-back arrangement of a Danish folk melody sent the fans of this boy band home happy and satisfied.
Reviewed by Tony Way
MUSIC
Wuigada – Gagada (To Sing – Loud) | Now or Never Festival ★★★★
Kutcha Edwards and the Australian Art Orchestra, Capitol Theatre, Friday August 30
Wuigada – Gagada, the title of Kutcha Edwards’ collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra, is a phrase in the Mutti Mutti language of Edwards’ ancestors – a language Edwards was forbidden from using after he was taken from his family as a child. Later in life, he reclaimed that language as part of his identity, and when he sings in Mutti Mutti, there’s a sense he is connecting with something intensely personal and profound.
Kutcha Edwards with AAO artistic director Aaron Choulai.Credit: Ibukun Oloruntoba
Of course, his English-language lyrics can have an equally potent effect, as they did in Edwards’ superb concert with the Australian Art Orchestra on Friday night. Artistic director Aaron Choulai (on keyboards) and trumpeter-arranger Eugene Ball previously worked with Edwards in the Black Arm Band, and the singer was clearly delighted to be reuniting with them for this project.
Ball’s masterful arrangements, coupled with the band’s unerring sensitivity, underscored the poetry and pathos of Edwards’ songs.
Unusual instrumental pairings (Rhodes and vibraphone; trumpet and contrabass recorder) and shifting dynamics created backdrops that ranged from spare and understated to dramatic and angular.
Singing Up Country opened in a field of rippling, rolling improvisation before settling into a languid shuffle. Mrs. Edwards (which recounts Edwards’ painful meeting with his birth mother after many years apart) featured a maelstrom of wailing electric guitar, mirroring Edwards’ inner turmoil as he recalled the “heartache and sorrow… so hard to ignore”.
Kutcha Edwards performs with the AAO in Tasmania in early 2024.Credit: Moorilla Gallery
For Mother Tongue, Edwards stood and sang in Mutti Mutti to each musician in turn – and then to us directly, from the front of the stage – in a gesture that was part blessing, part invocation.
The final song (Keep on Singing) evoked both sorrow and reassurance, Helen Svoboda’s arco bass wrapping tendrils around Edwards’ lyrics as his rich, supple voice trembled with emotion. The singer wiped away tears, and he wasn’t the only one. It made for a deeply moving end to a compelling, thought-provoking show.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas
MUSIC
Faure’s Requiem ★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, August 29
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra laid aside the managerial travails of the past fortnight, culminating in the departure this week of managing director Sophie Galaise, with a sumptuous performance of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at Hamer Hall on Thursday.
Conductor Lawrence Renes had clearly worked hard on balancing all the forces within orchestra and choir.Credit: Laura Manariti
Unlike Mozart’s dramatic Requiem or Verdi’s virtuosic, operatic version, Faure’s Requiem is sober, calm and serenely beautiful, and it received a deeply moving performance.
It is a great showcase for the excellent MSO Chorus in total command under Warren Trevelyan-Jones, while conductor Lawrence Renes had clearly worked hard on balancing all the forces within orchestra and choir.
There are two soloists, soprano and baritone, but they sing for a total of about four minutes each, so it was luxury casting in the extreme to have Siobhan Stagg and Roderick Williams on stage.
Melbourne-raised Stagg, who is establishing a spectacular international career, sang Pie Jesu, the movement most often extracted from the work for recitals. Shut your eyes – or, indeed, open them – and it could have been an angel, such was her tender purity. Williams was sweet-toned and heroic.
Unlike Mozart’s dramatic Requiem or Verdi’s operatic version, Faure’s Requiem is sober, calm and serenely beautiful.Credit: Laura Manariti
The concert was marred, as it is whenever an organ is required, by the small “pop-up toaster” (valiantly played by Andrew Bainbridge) that is the only option, instead of the majestic built-in instrument an orchestra like the MSO and the city’s main concert hall demand. Arts Centre management removed the organ when the hall was refurbished a decade ago, and simply refuse to replace it.
An oddity for the Faure was an arrangement of the orchestra new to me: violas on the left, switching with the first violins, cellos in the middle, and double basses divided between the two wings. The reason, according to the MSO, is that the violins have a minor role in this work – there are two viola and two cello sections, but only one violin section. Principal violist Christopher Moore was thus concertmaster for this work.
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Before the interval were Sibelius’ mysterious, elemental seventh symphony – his last, though he lived another 33 years – and Mythic by much-loved Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin. Mythic, a subtle work of some substance, is described by the composer as “a kind of hymn with variations”. Scott Kinmont shone in the demanding trombone obbligato in the Sibelius, where Renes showed again his fine sense of shape and architecture.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz
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