Presented by Australian Dance Theatre, TAFE SA Adelaide College of the Arts and Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed Thursday 11th August 2011
http://www.adt.org.au/worldhood-2
http://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/afc/whats-on/dance/worldhood.php
Venue: Her Majesty's Theatre, Grote Street, Adelaide
Season: 7pm nightly to Sat 13th August 2011
Duration: 1hr 25min
Tickets: adult $45/conc $40/under 30s $29
Bookings: BASS 131 241 or http://www.bass.net.au
As the lights slowly came up they revealed the figure of Adelaide artist, Thom Buchanan, starting to draw one of his signature street scenes. The amplified sounds of his charcoal being pushed across the paper formed the beginning of the sound-scape. Eventually a lone dancer enters and echoes his movements, gradually stylising them. Electronic sounds and, eventually, a strong bass line is added to the music as more dancers arrive and proceed to create a ninety minute performance with so many ideas and variations. There is even a brief lecture on the history of mark making included in the soundtrack.
Garry Stewart has taken full advantage of the large forces at his command through the combination of his own ADT dancers and third year students from AC Arts. Based on his conception, he also collaborated with all of the dancers in creating this work. This allows for enormous opportunities to explore numerous concepts in endless combinations of the dancers. To begin with, there are a lot of mechanical movements, reflecting the built environment that Buchanan is constructing. The dancers construct it with him, through their movements.
At one stage, four dancers, clothed head to foot in terracotta coloured outfits, are brought on by other dancers. They are placed, moved, posed, positioned in various stances and treated like the dancers' equivalent of bricks, these 'construction blocks' being manipulated to create semi-static structures within the movement. Buchanan echoed these four dancers by adding terracotta colour to his charcoal drawing. Just as we interact with our buildings, so the dancers interact with those in the all-enclosing orange costumes.
Another clever scene involves the use of four large settees that the dancers manipulate as though they weighed almost nothing. This was choreographed by Stewart, Larissa McGowan and the ADT dancers.
Buchanan's drawing slowly grows and takes on more details, with the Taj Mahal and a pyramid appearing next to the street scene with which he began, expressing man's universal drive to build. Suddenly, when he is done, his drawing is torn down, folded roughly and removed.
The dancing changes from the often mechanical and angular forms of the first part to a more flowing and organic style with Buchanan returning to create a second drawing, beginning with a large plant and adding a hammerhead shark. Just as we have seen with civilisations of the past, removing the humans who provide the upkeep of structures allows them to decay and be torn down by nature. This amazing work takes us full circle, from the blank page, through the building, the destruction and the return to nature.
Five of the dancers then obliterate the second drawing with charcoal, once more destroying the natural environment, ready to build anew, the circle now being completed.
This is a totally integrated production, with the links between Buchanan's drawings and the dancers being only two parts of the whole. Composer, Huey Benjamin, and lighting designer, Mark Pennington, must not be overlooked for their massive contribution and Wendy Todd's costume design and set, co-designed with Stewart, have been carefully considered to be more than just an adjunct to the performance. These elements are a vital part of it, too.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
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