Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold: a quirky bulldozer of authenticity

Like lemon on sugared pancakes, Sydney Dance Company perfectly blends the staple with the fresh in its latest double bill Twofold. Starting with the pantry, Impermanence is the pandemic baby of Sydney Dance Company, though its conception predates covid (a long pregnancy, a difficult birth). 

As Rafael Bonachela tells it, the genesis came to him while on a visit to Paris in 2019, with composer Bryce Dessner, just after the burning of Notre Dame, and around the time of the Australian bushfires. They spoke of the fragility of everything, even structures imagined to be eternal, and the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation. In March 2022, Australia went into lockdown four days before the intended premiere. When Impermanence finally opened in 2021, it had also mutated. From the ashes rose urgency, radiance, and life.

Impermanence is classic Sydney Dance Company repertoire: gorgeous, abstract, athletic. At the same time, it evokes the atmosphere of solitude, through an almost detached and pedestrian observation of people moving about their lives (remember when we all came out of lockdown, a little unsure how to navigate people). The dancers move across the stage, rippling in response to another, with a growing oceanic ebb and flow. In the far back corner is a four-string quartet. It views like a New York thoroughfare, with the musicians adding a sidewalk to symphony contrast. The music of Impermanence is seamlessly interwoven with the movement: a beautiful alignment of limbs and strings.

The dancers are breathtaking as ever. Solos, duets, quartets and quintets detail the transition from isolation to connection. I don’t know another company that harnesses momentum with the same targeted brilliance as Sydney Dance company; gravity defying barrel rolls and jetés en tournant power flawlessly into floor and partner work.

It was wonderful to see Mia Thompson back, performing with the company again, with her fluid, fine-boned, thoughtful style, after bringing her (and former company member Victor Zarallo’s) daughter into the world last year. Emily Seymour is a dancer in her absolute prime, hitting the stunning intersection between physical power and artistic maturity at every performance. Piran Scott is always an absolute vibe. Naira de Matos brings presence and emotional integrity. Riley Fitzgerald, Luke Hayward, Liam Green and Chloe Young are as exceptional as always. I’ve proved my point by singling almost every dancer out: this entire company moves with commitment, passion and astonishing technical excellence.

Moving on to the fresh produce, the second half of Twofold is the world premiere of Love Lock. Choreographed by Melanie Lane, one of the most interesting dance voices in Australia, Love Lock is a deranged and glorious mantra of love. It’s a wacky, insouciant, laugh out loud, bizarre and elaborate courtship ritual that hits deep in the gut. There’s no avoiding the gut-hit, given Love Lock opens with a visceral, throbbing bass scattered with bird sounds (the score by British electronic artist Clark is spectacular), while 17 dancers lounge saucily about a smoky stage in minimal black latex, gaze deployed straight at the audience. There’s nothing coy here. It’s giving straight-up kink.

The visceral is important in this piece, because Lane created Love Lock to detail the complexities of love in the digital age. We can often find ourselves, she says, alone in a world that is saturated with aspirations of romance, without the means to truly connect. Love Lock is an engine of authenticity bulldozing through a field of Instagram filters.

As the performance evolves, along with the peacocking – we must attract a mate! – the dancers begin to adorn themselves in the most spectacular Akira Isogawa designs: moss green tendrils, sky blue frills, gold sashes, red sequins and a glorious cape-of-many-colours paraded to devastating effect by Piran Scott.

My only reservation, a very tiny one, was that the piece involves the dancers doing a kind of call and response vocalizing. There are about 15 different ways dancers vocalizing on stage can go wrong. Mercifully, this one only went wrong in one or two of those.

Love Lock is a work of bold genius and unfiltered creativity. It’s giving antipodean Sharon Eyal. It’s giving an alternate universe where David Attenborough narrates erotic, avian musical fiction. It’s the high-art, contemporary dance version of 23.9 million YouTube views of Sirocco, the frisky New Zealand kākāpō, vigorously humping a zoologist’s head, to the exclamatory delight of Stephen Fry: “You’re being shagged by a rare parrot! He’s really going for it! A television first!” It’s giving Cassowaries Gone Wild. It’s a cult I absolutely want to join. It’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest where all the inmates are fabulous, fashionable, flexible and have killer core strength. It’s giving all the flower crowns, open skies and lilting Scandinavian charm of the Midsommer movie, minus the inbreeding and shitty, unfaithful boyfriend.

Cross oceans if you must. This is the real deal.