One Point 618. 5 August
Quick Fix is a wonderfully rare thing in contemporary dance. It presents as a brilliant meld of pure theatre and pure dance, a superbly engaging exploration of the lure we call the ‘quick fix’, for our many needs and desires in text and movement.
Choreographer Katrina Lazaroff and creative collaborators/dancers Andrew Haycroft and Rebecca Bainger fashion a work where the set challenge is to balance the psychology of craving, needing things to be ‘perfect’, and how those things play out physically.
The greatest desired quick fix of all centres on the body; to be fitter, faster, thinner, smarter, and more attractive. Lazaroff’s choreography doesn’t merely focus on obvious physical tropes alluding to gym workouts, with assistance from two brilliantly used stepladder stools. There’s a dark and furious undertow to the sharp and angled energetic movement interplayed with rapid fire barked promises of media produced offers, promising to sate desire.
It’s as if Haycroft and Bainger are a couple drifting apart, as the male seeks more of what he wants promised by commercial media, and the female shrinks from it, during the middle phrases of the piece. Bainger’s expressed physical ease with fitness workouts can’t be matched by over large hulking Hayrcoft.
Which brings Haycroft and Bainger to the powerful core of Quick Fix. The deadening desire to shape others to meet unrealistic ideals is driven with superb power by Haycroft. He bends, twists, twirls and pivots Bainger’s body into representations of the ultimate male fantasy of the ‘perfect’ woman. In doing so, Bainger gives great expression of the false, plastic nature of this desired perfection. Haycroft’s body jerks and shakes like a junkie who just can’t get the fix right. He keeps telling us what he wants, tries creating and it and fails.
Is there an escape? Maybe.
David O’Brien
When: 5 August
Where: Marion Cultural Centre, Domain Theatre
Bookings: Closed
