Isabela Coracy: Creatures
Isabela Coracy’s Creatures is a short piece of brilliance. Taking on a costume aesthetic of urban decay and mystery, it is a triptych showcasing the strengths of its three dancers with presence and impact.
Creatures begins with the figure of dancer Megan Chiu demonstrating a fluidity of movement that ripples through the back, neck, head and finely tuned extensions in ways that are not always achieved in modern ballet. This is a theme of the dancers in this bill, who use the planes of floor and air with equal ease as if both were malleable.
Coracy’s use of Chui’s high insteps as pointed lynchpins that anchor sharp and directive steps is engaging and characterises her as a ‘creature’ with more than a hint of supernatural power.
Chiu’s fellow creatures are similarly both very human in the way they support, shadow and propel her and otherworldly in their unity and perfected placements. Bhungane Mehlomakulu and Elijah Peterkin are as impressive but differently so, using sinuous muscularity and strength as their tender in this exhibition of agency.
The score by Paul Calderone is also unusually evocative—combining sparce spoken word with industrial beats. The rhythm of the riffs ‘There was something about the way they…’ organically works with the cadence of movement and serves to frame the Creatures as both human and completely unknowable at the same time—an achievement in this sophisticated and fully realised piece.
Jacob Wye: Perennial
Jacob Wye’s piece is an ideal counter to Coracy’s in its grounded humour and rootedness in a social dance—tango.
A love triangle with cynical awareness between participants is introduced as Hannah Rudd, Dan Crossley and Jacob Wye slip into each other’s dynamic.
Here, live spoken word functions more as storytelling—peppering interludes with the rhetorical questions and mundanities that you may find in coupley coffee and dinner dates with family and friends. As such, the scripting is predictable but drives home the point well—these are characters moving in and out of inertia, boredom, intrigue and comfort at a pace relatable to many.
At times, the spattering of dialogue with movement feels incongruent and awkward—this is so normal for dance pieces that contend with live voices. Music theatre innovator Wagner reckoned that the issue was ‘amplification’ or the theatricality of voice matching the theatricality of movement. Naturalistic dialogue and broad movement don’t generally go down well together. However, Perennial comes close to a happy combination.
Rudd, Crossley and Wye do justice to an entertaining piece that will resonate.
Helga Paris Morales: Standing Still but Moving Fast
The evening’s final, fuller-length offering takes us into the familiar territory of the exterior and interior lives of contemporary city dwellers with masterly execution.
The fun, physical theatre play on people travelling by Tube is carefully exploded out into sequences that see the ensemble enact work and efforts at social expression and freedom. Sensitive partner work stands out from the reaching, lunging and rond de jambe of ballet fused with contemporary grammar.
A change of costume in pastels midway, dreamily takes us into the realms of the characters’ personal, social and imaginative lives with the qualities of reaching, gliding and travelling with aspiration.
Morales’s use of staggered and simultaneous bursts of activity is to be applauded, as is the use of stagecraft to break the invisible boundary o societal conditioning.
The seven company members do justice to this craftsmanlike work which could easily transition to a larger auditorium.
A new initiative from Ballet Black, this emerging choreographer’s showcase is to be applauded for showcasing quality from a healthy spread of genders and backgrounds.