Yes, the first person walked on the moon and came safely back home.
And yes, the Sydney Dance Company burst onto the scene and brought contemporary dance to a city that was in the throes of psychedelia, flower-power and the draft to send our boys to Vietnam to clean-up what we now call terrorists.
Appropriately, for its 50th birthday, the Sydney Dance Company commissioned choreographer Gabrielle Nankivell to take us to outer-space on a rocket-ship journey to that ethereal sphere where ether, the mythical element that lets earth, water, fire and air form the world, primes senses to set them free.
Nankivell’s new work, Neon Aether, rides the speed of light to hurtle the audience, with the help of composer Luke Smiles’s score and lighting designer Damien Cooper’s magic, to a sphere of exploding stars, caught by the dancers with lightning-streak precision and quantum-force finesse. Harriet Oxley devised the costumes.
Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela’s new work Cinco celebrates his glorious tenth year as the Sydney Dance Company’s scintillating beacon.
Cinco is the second treat in the Sydney Dance Company’s 50th Anniversary Season One show. Inspired by composer Alberto Ginastera’s String Quartet No.2 Op.26, Cinco showcases the inimitable, mature, magisterial Bonachela-God-given gift to ignite spine-tingling lyricism with brazen strength: to use the vernacular, he gives beautiful dancers balls when classical sensitivity meets shameless and bold defiance.
Bianca Spender designed the costumes and Damien Cooper created the lighting for Cinco.
Neon Aether and Cinco pave the way for the third offering in this feast of contemporary dance. Watching choreographer Melanie Lane’s Woof is like seeing God at her humblest and most seductive.
Beginning in stillness and starting in silence, the company of dancers emerge into life as if on the first pristine morning in Eden.
The sweet song is heard in Paradise: a synergy of one and all, as each individual dancer’s unique self unfolds with the vitality of the collective, intercoursing whole.
The more autonomous the individual gesture, the more harmonious the bold vigour of all.
This is pure nectar: delectable bliss.
The music for Woof was created by composer Clark; Aleisa Jelbart did the costume design; Verity Hampson was lighting designer.
Sydney Dance Company’s 50th Anniversary Season One: Bonachela / Nankivell / Lane is at the Roslyn Packer Theatre until 13 April.
