Sydney Dance Company in ‘CounterMove’
Sydney Dance Company will burst into 2016 with a stunning two-part program, juxtaposing works from two renowned contemporary dance visionaries – multi-award winning Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman and Sydney Dance Company Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela.
This latest offering from Australia’s contemporary dance company will bring together movement, music, dramatics, philosophy and comedy in an intoxicating double bill program presented by 16 of Australia’s finest dancers at the top of their game.
One of Europe’s most prodigious and highly sought-after artists, Alexander Ekman has skyrocketed to celebrity in less than 10 years since choreographing his first work. In this time he has been commissioned by more than 45 leading dance companies around the globe, including Netherlands Dance Theater, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and Atlanta Ballet, to name just a few.
In his 2010 work Cacti, Ekman turns his eye upon the scene that birthed him, presenting a gleeful and knowing parody of the affectations of contemporary dance.
Sixteen dancers stand – seemingly trapped, on oversized Scrabble tiles. While a string quartet plays, and spoken recordings give tongue-in-cheek narration of the action, the dancers run, fall, writhe and try to escape their invisible prisons. Eventually – and this is the important bit, they each acquire a cactus. But what does it all mean?
One of Ekman’s most popular and successful pieces, Cacti is a laugh-out-loud funny and affectionate deconstruction of art’s greater excesses, described by The Australian as, “An extraordinarily original and vibrant work of dance-theatre – witty, effervescent, playful, surreal and joyously physical.” [Read Dance Informa’s take on Cacti in our review of Atlanta Ballet’s MAYhem program earlier this year.]
Rafael Bonachela’s world premiere of Lux Tenebris will provide the perfect contrast. Named for the Latin term meaning ‘Light and Darkness’, this full ensemble piece will explore the extremes of human experience, responding to a newly commissioned powerful and evocative visceral soundscape by frequent Sydney Dance Company collaborator, composer Nick Wales (Rafael Bonachela’s 2 One Another, Emergence and Scattered Rhymes.)
Showcasing the dancers’ trademark poetic and technical mastery, Bonachela’s movement will follow deep, unexpected twists to discover a dark place where there is space for beauty and light.
CounterMove will open at Sydney’s Roslyn Packer Theatre in Walsh Bay on February 26 ahead of seasons at Canberra Theatre Centre, opening May 19, and Southbank Theatre in Melbourne, opening May 25. Book now for all venues at sydneydancecompany.com/productions/countermove.
The show will also tour to regional New South Wales, regional Queensland, Darwin and regional Western Australia, from June 17 to August 27.
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Photo: Sydney Dance Company dancer Bernhard Knauer. Photo by Irenaeus Herok.