Adelaide Festival Review

From the outset, the staging of Rubicon draws you in. The square is Wimbledon green, with marking obscure/familiar enough to hint a game, a court, an arena, somewhere to do a structured battle.

And when the dancers come out to play they do so in the sort of languid time which allows our eyes to wander, our heads to move, following the intersections, rejections and connections that grace one then the other. In this way a landscape of interactions and their implications seeps into us.

Before long the spaces delineated become makeshift rooms where singles and couples lie as if depicting the passage of time or the give and take on the energy of life while half-serious duets and solos depict the consequences of what came before.

Throughout it, the soundtrack could not have been better chosen – the perfect mix to lure and lull us into the nether-world which these creatures inhabit. Bravo, Prue Lang –delightful.

In Meridian, Leigh Warren puts us into a simple white circle.

Leigh’s dancers run on, and work hard without any time seeming frenetic and out of our grasp, and the duets in the second part in particular show the sheer beauty of the choreography. Again you sit close enough to hear the footfall and breath of the piece – the extra gifts from this company and the closeness of these works.

Incredibly, the piece is occasionally lit with just one lantern – a sacred emphasis on pure form and shadow making the experience different for each one of the audience. This is an intimate space, and here we deal with intimate things – the orbits we find ourselves in, the need for touch, the end of it all.

Alexander Waite Mitchell’s score is again a highlight, the sort of atmospheric rendering that would come from the love child of Keith Jarret and Arvo Part. When it is all over, too soon, small pools of sweat remain as the only reminders of a night of beauty and meaning.

(Rob De Kok)