First on Queensland Ballet’s seventh Bespoke program and a first for the company is a work by a First Nations choreographer. Katina Olsen, a Wakka Wakka Kombumerri woman, created gundirgan, wise woman, to honour the life of Wakka Wakka elder Aunty Maureen Williams, tracing her path in negotiating two worlds. In addition to working with Olsen in the studio during the creative process, the dancers visited Ban Ban Springs, a sacred place for the Wakka Wakka people. gundirgan is the most substantial part of Bespoke, in terms of content and impact.
Guest artist and Mingunberri woman Tara Robinson plays Aunty Maureen, her fluidity and authority the focal point for the other 18 dancers, and the audience. At first, Aunty Maureen is growing up on her Country. The barefoot dancers form rounded shapes, looking like embryonic beings, gradually unfolding. The group ebbs and flows around Robinson, sometimes surrounding her, sometimes following her. The movement is grounded, the dancers bent over, often crouching or lying on the floor. Their hands are frequently clasped together, so that the linked arms move as one.
Later, Aunty Maureen seems to be uncertain, trying to keep up with the rest of the group as she lives in both the worlds of the Wakka Wakka people, and of the white colonisers. But she endures, regains energy and wins through. Particularly evocative moments are couples dancing to a fractured, off-kilter waltz; a spiky, angular dance echoing animal movements; and Wakka Wakka man Chris Williams stalking the stage while playing the didgeridoo.
The didgeridoo is a major part of the powerful music for gundirgan, composed by Seán O’Boyle and Williams, and played live onstage by chamber group Southern Cross Soloists. The music has very strong rhythms that inspire you to move! It uses rich sonorities in the lower registers of the strings, but also has delicate, plaintive and lyrical sections.
The set for gundirgan, as for all three works, is minimal. Lighting is the more prominent element (design for all three works by Ben Hughes). The costumes (designer Noelene Hill) are loose pants and singlets, pale blue and white for Aunty Maureen, and white, blotched with soft ochres and blues, for the other dancers.
Following the energy of gundirgan and its live music, the remainder of the program felt less involving. Birds of Paradise, choreographed by Milena Sidorova, is a much lighter work, exploring mating rituals and relations between the sexes. It is very funny, and the audience enjoyed it immensely. Sidorova is a Ukrainian–Dutch choreographer based in Amsterdam at the Dutch National Ballet.
Sidorova’s style embodies a neoclassical/contemporary wit and elegance. After gundirgan, her work feels very European. Five couples appear in various combinations in a sequence of different courtship vignettes. The men are in striking plumage: black pants, muscle T-shirts and shoes, each with a tailored jacket of a different bright colour. The women wear short grey dresses with stiff shoulder-ruffs, and soft shoes. Costumes were designed by Sidorova and Timothy Corne.
All the performers danced with comic flair and precision, making the most of the bird-like intensity of the movement, with its staccato passages and quick freezes. In contrast to their grey plumage, the movement for the women was more intricate and nuanced than the showy posturing of the men. Neneka Yoshida and Edison Manuel were impressive in a lovely duo; Luca Armstrong wooed a streetlamp in an amusing solo; and Laura Tosar, Patricio Revé and Callum Mackie performed their trio with great energy. The recorded music suited the pieces well, and ranged from Elvis (Love Me Tender) to Django Reinhardt and Schubert.
Papillon, the final work on the program, dissipated the energy generated by the first two works. This contemporary piece was choreographed by Jack Lister for the company’s 12 Jette Parker Young Artists, with electronic music composed by Louis Frere-Harvey. The title suggests the lifecycle from caterpillar to butterfly, appropriate for these developing artists. However, the action bore this out only in very general terms: slow movement to start with, fast at the end, and a collapsing tent structure that might signify a chrysalis. Why were some dancers walking around slowly on the network of steel grids high above the stage? Why were the dancers muttering?
The dancers performed this cryptic work with commitment. The costumes, jewel-coloured lycra tops and skorts, and pale socks, were designed by Lister and Zoe Griffiths. Some of the skorts were voluminously furry. The dramatic lighting pierced an overall darkness, intriguingly silhouetting the costume colours and outlines.
The advertised length of the programme is two hours 20 minutes, including two 20-minute intervals. The first two works are around 30 minutes long, and the third 40 or so minutes. I would much prefer a redistribution of the times of the works, and only one interval. The second interval makes the evening unnecessarily long.
