// archives

dance

This category contains 35 posts

Changing the Face of Australian Theatre

New Matilda, part 2.

Show Ponies for a Young Nation

Collecting my last writing for New Matilda, part 1.

Deborah Hay’s work returns to Melbourne

The news has just hit my inbox: Dancehouse is presenting a choreography by Deborah Hay (whose If I Sing For You was shown, with great popular success, at MIAF 2008). I am terribly busy, so I will reproduce the press release down below:
DANCEHOUSE in partnership with Critical Path, STRUT dance and Bundanon Trust [...]

Malthouse season 2

Michael Kantor’s last season (just announced) looks strangely like a Best Of Malthouse 2005-2010 (subtitle: The Kantor Years), or a Tribute To… CD (Melbourne indie theatre does Malthouse OR Malthouse does Melbourne indie… you choose). And not just that, but a Christmas edition with two bonus tracks (Great International Name + the understudy makes an appearance).

Brief: Xavier Le Roy @ Dancehouse

Before I forget; the best dance piece I’ve seen all year, bar Sasha Waltz (still undecided), has been Xavier Le Roy’s performance Product of Circumstance, a one-night showing at Dancehouse last week. There is a write-up in The Age, but to call it a review would be absurd.
It is a description of sorts, and [...]

RW: En Trance

It is very rare that I go out of my way to write a reflection on a theatre piece I didn’t enjoy. Particularly considering that this was one evening I had spent in the theatre purely for pleasure, not for work in any way, that I was a paying customer in civilian clothes, and that what I am going to do can fairly be called a deliberate act of meanness.

RW: Run

De Quincey Co.’s Run might have sat better with me had I seen it after a few cups of coffee.

RW: Miracle

The fantasy of the Grand March is the political kitsch joining leftists of all times and tendencies. The Grand March is the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and on, obstacles notwithstanding,, for obstacles there must be if the march is to be the Grand March. - Milan [...]

Pina Bausch is Dead

More than one person around me recently has been loudly annoyed that Michael Jackson’s death is a Bigger Deal than that of Pina Bausch. Sure, MJ is a pop idol, an icon, an image. But Pina Bausch has re-taught us how to look at the body: as far as 20th-century art goes, Bausch is as [...]

Teuila Postcards, or the revenge of the cultural object

Teuila Postcards is an example of that thing-that-isn’t-theatre: performance. To use the language deign of theatre-lay restaurateurs, say, on annual night out, it is dancing with a narrative that goes beyond movement, yet never resolves into a plot. In the audience comprised mainly of enthused Pacific Islanders, my date and I had an evening of giggles and standing ovation, and understood perfectly how come theatre is ritual, rather than story-telling.