Australian Dance Theatre. Dunstan Playhouse. 22 Sep 2022
Plastic white chairs. They adorn off stage proper on audience level. Then there is, largely unnoticed as the audience take their seats, the striking figure of Jada Narkle seated on stage. She’s introspectively considering the floor. Her fingers trace it. She leaves the space. She returns to it, sitting and tracing the floor with her fingers. Considering her surroundings, framed by a wall of metallic tarp stretched over a large wheeled mobile, balanced against a black circle on floor centre stage.
These eerie, unnoticed, almost lost opening moments are crucial to grasping the multilayered, intensely intelligent, profoundly frenetic, yet subtle work that Savage is.
Dean Cross’s set and costumes offer up delicately layered symbology bolstering Daniel Riley’s choreography. The earthy red ochre of Jada Narkle’s slit, sleeveless, light fabric dress against the black circle and ochre-lit stage point loudly to a core consideration of indigenous issues. These elements ground the production conceptually.
The red ochre appears in part on street clothes worn by the ensemble. Clothes denoting the underclass. People who battle. People who fight over ideas, themselves and the chairs. James Howard’s soundscape is hard edged, sonic, thrilling, abrasive then melodious techno. Perfectly suited to a production focussing on battling ideas, on holding onto a spot in the world.
How truly savage is this battle. Those chairs also dance. They are viciously hurled across the stage, stacked, sat on, throw off their occupants, claimed, climbed on, passed over and around by the dancers.
All the while, the battle is being reframed in perspective. Many a time, two large mobile mesh wire fences sweep the stage forcing dancers to move, swooping over them and changing the tableaux onstage. The ‘heroic’ becomes brutal subjugation. ‘Success’ becomes obliteration. Riley’s visual manipulation, construction of depth of field, and imagery is superb.
Stylistically, Riley’s choreography is richly rough. It is down and dirty, yet simultaneously silky smooth. Brutality blends with this smoothness of physical competition between the ensemble. Gesture is widely used to connote the lure of come hither, to push and shove and pull, to challenge. There’s no mucking around with meaning here.
Savage is a mighty fine introduction to a new ADT era under Daniel Riley. The man is a heady thinker as was his predecessor Garry Stewart. Riley’s thinking in Savage suggests an interest in exploring deeply polemical issues through dance. That is to be welcomed.
David O’Brien
When: 21 to 25 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
