Adelaide Festival Centre. Space Theatre. 24 May 2014
While the flyer for A Delicate Situation describes the theme of this emotionally charged dance work, I would have enjoyed going in stone cold and working it out myself. But since you have already missed the Adelaide season, I hope you don't mind if I partly give the game away.
Regarding the flyer, you would have been hooked by Chris Herzfeld's dramatic photo of creator Lina Limosani's imaginations of Pontianak, a tragic figure of Malaysian mythology. The dance opens with pools of white silk in a jet black matrix. With masterful illusion, a hallmark of this production, one silk comes to shimmering life and is inhabited and animated by a demonic and thrashing form that later transmogrifies into the image in the photo. But next is a more domestic scene. An elegant woman, past middle age, obsessed with her bright red nails and the back of her hands and lipstick, is stylishly attired in a dress and matching short coat. Perhaps an expatriate banker's wife in southeast Asia, back from the hairdresser's, she is attended to by an Oriental servant with enough of the characteristics of Pontianak to create the menace and suspense in the narrative that gives this production its delicious intrigue. Comically, I am reminded of the inscrutable and uncontrollable Cato in the service of Inspector Clouseau - a situation promising a chaotic conflagration to upset the domestic applecart.
And the stakes are high. Director and choreographer Limosani has Carol Wellman Kelly and Suhaili Micheline Ahmad Kamil entwining in a dance that will - must - end with one victor and one supplicant. Limosani achieves all her objectives stated in the program. A Delicate Situation is an accomplished synthesis of narrative and contemporary dance. She has ably played on our primordial desire to personify death and our well dressed lady gets glimpses of her nemesis in the mirror. Suhaili is a disciplined and highly accomplished physical performer with every sinew in commanded service, no matter how rapid or jagged her movements might be in her inimitable style. Puppetry and illusion play a strongly supporting role. Canadian designer Eve Lambert's billowing silks are ethereal and beautiful to behold, while Malaysian Hardesh Singh's score is menacing and driving. All members of the creative come to Adelaide with a swag of international credentials.
At only fifty minutes duration, this is a lustrous gem of dance and a reminder of our mortality. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
