Watching Two: Four: Ten, a retrospective celebration of contemporary choreographer Russell Maliphant’s most significant works, feels a little like listening to extremely beautiful, but excessively quiet music - you are attentive and appreciative at first, but eventually become slightly irritated and long to turn up the volume. All four pieces on the program consisted of sensitively choreographed duets exploring power interplay, suspension and propinquity, and when seen independently they are all uniquely powerful. Juxtaposed, however, they suffer in their similarity. Each duet is performed in neutral-coloured, baggy clothes - meaning we miss some beautiful lines - each is darkly lit and all appear overwhelmingly introverted. The dancers are deeply engaged in experimentation with each other’s bodies to the occasional detriment of the audience’s interest.
Sheer (2001) stands out owing to the haunting synchronisation of its performers. Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur create an exclusive and hypnotic envelope of emotions - entwining wrists express almost painful tenderness whilst risky catches evoke near-dangerous dependency. Silhouetted at times, at others forming growing and shrinking shadows on dwarfing white backdrops, they dance as though nothing else exists. At one poignant moment, Oaks looks out towards their shadows as though distracted briefly from their insular world, yet when she looks back we feel instinctively that we have lost her to him for good.
Two x Two (2001) fares less well. Usually performed by one dancer, the piece is reworked here as a duet for Dana Fouras and Daniel Proietto. Confined to two boxes of light, the dancers sweep and swing their arms through space with increasing fervour, fashioning shapes in the air as though holding sparklers. While the piece is absorbing in its incremental intensity and the idea novel to begin with, the persistent pulsating score and spotlighted athletic bodies eventually seem a little too reminiscent of a highly stylised sports commercial.
The last piece, Critical Mass (1998), is stunningly executed by Adam Cooper and Russell Maliphant, yet by this point in the evening we are desperate for some variation in colour, tone and atmosphere. We crave some daring allegro to spike the bubble of subtle tumbles and gentle cartwheels. We wish for the performers to look out and engage with us.
For an audience familiar with Maliphant’s work, the evening offers little in the way of fresh insight. For the uninitiated, the indulgent programming drains the pieces of their definition, displaying his material in a strangely anaemic light.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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