Dan Riley’s new Australian Dance Theatre work draws on 60 years of ADT history, while simultaneously exploring the themes of people, politics, place, voice and body, all while integrating the live music of loop pedal improviser Adam Page. Following a three-year development process, which included input from founding artistic director Elizabeth Cameron Dalman AM CDOAL, the result is a collection of often sublime individual parts but there is an absence of a clearly discernible unifying whole.
Bringing the ambitious vision of A Quiet Language to the stage was always going to be challenging: how do you encapsulate 60 years of history into an hour of sound and movement, while also exploring five expansive themes? The task for director Dan Riley and co-director Brianna Kell was made harder by injuries to dancers during rehearsals, leading to a reduced cast of five dancers: Sebastian Geilings, Yilin Kong, Zachary Lopez, Patrick O’Luanaigh and Zoe Wozniak. The dancers are joined on stage by wizard bearded maestro saxophonist Adam Page, who integrates the vocalisations of the dancers and their chest and thigh slapping into a wonderous soundscape. High atop either side of the stage are panoramic screens which project mountains at sunrise, swirling oceans, scorched desert sands, protest slogans, and even a list of ADT performers.
Interpreting the emotions and meanings behind a modern dance performance can be notoriously tricky at the best of times; arguably a singularity of focus is necessary, a distillation of an essential truth rather than a blended cocktail of ideas. By adding Page’s live music magic to the mix, alongside the five dancers and the projections, the audience’s focus is divided. This division of attention is exacerbated by the often abrupt thematic and contextual shifts, from the natural world to protest movements on urban streets. Within the disjointed whole, there are breathtaking parts: Page’s score and Zoe Wozniak’s presence throughout, which includes a dazzling solo, where she is ringed by Mark Oakley’s superb lighting.
Ultimately A Quiet Language is a collection of beautiful words but it remains unclear precisely what it’s trying to say to us.
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