The final time we noticed Stephanie Lake’s troupe was at RISING in 2022, when 9 dancers collaborated with 9 drummers within the heart-thumping choreographic and musical feat that was Manifesto. This time spherical, Lake has up the ante. Though it solely goes for a bit of over an hour, the manufacturing feels epic in its bold attain.
But to even name it a dance efficiency does The Chronicles a disservice; whereas it definitely showcases the rigour and great thing about the human physique, the manufacturing is a multidisciplinary one which corrals all parts of the stage: sound, set design, costume and lighting to supply us a beguiling survey of the cycles of life in all its seasons. It’s no accident that delivery and demise bookend the present.
The Chronicles begins quietly, humbly even, with a dancer spotlit in a foetal curl. She seems to be like a current hatchling stretching out her limbs. A gradual tender, heartbeat will be heard. There’s a palpable sense of new child vulnerability in the way in which she strikes. The stage is then swarmed by a bunch of 10 that diverges in several mixtures and permutations: solo, in pairs and in threes. Welcome to the world, baby.
Hastily there’s a way of chaos and urgency that heralds the interconnectedness of people, and the way in which now we have to navigate our personal method, aided and hindered by others. Succumbing to look group strain then splintering off to check your individuality towards the pack mentality are all performed out with the grace, precision and energy anticipated and demanded {of professional} dancers. Robin Fox’s soundscape modifications all through the manufacturing: the composition consists of pulsating, electro, jagged, hums and clicks, staccato bullet-like and deeper, primal beats.
There are numerous segmented items on this manufacturing, with applicable tonal shifts. The following part entails a youngsters’s choir – The Yarra Voices – and their choral entreaties. Virtually ghostly in white tunics, they stand in ethereal distinction to the earthy-toned costumes of the dancers. They maintain lamps as they sing, maybe bearing metaphorical beacons of hope when all else is subsumed in darkness.
First positioned above the dancers, in their very own discrete house surrounded by tall grasses as if otherworldly entities presiding over and bearing witness to the motion that’s enjoying out, they step by step transfer right down to the principle enviornment – in any other case naked – and body the performers in a semi-circle formation. The tune sung is ‘Ah Poor Chicken’, the plaintive lyrics of which embrace: “take your flight far above the sorrows of this unhappy night time”. Are they signalling the realm of the non secular in our lives, or perhaps the nostalgic pull of childhood innocence? Irrespective of, the fantastic thing about modern dance is that it’s as open to interpretation as a poem: suggestve and descriptive however not prescriptive.
One other episode has the dancers – now in flowing skirts – transfer out and in of squares of lighting designed by Bosco Shaw; there’s a way of violence and unease right here as they battle to stay within the field, because it had been, trapped in inflexible strictures of expectations. This part feels as if they’re equipment cogs with the loud, jagged music that accompanies their actions.
The segue to the following section of life is visually spectacular because the stage is stuffed with an abundance of what seems to be like hay. In distinction to the verdant greenery that surrounded the choir earlier, these dried fibres mark one other seasonal change: from development to reap. Initially flung about and stamped upon by the performers with recklessness and pleasure, what begins as a recreation turns into ominous as considered one of them is about upon by the others and buried within the hay. It’s a precursor to the ultimate act: demise.
Fittingly a determine in black is now curled up, closed-in and unmoving.
The Chronicles is a supersonic delicate beast that breathes within the fragility of life in a sequence of emotional, visceral transitions.
At first it appears incongruous, to have baritone soloist Oliver Mann sing that well-known 80s hit ‘Without end Younger’, proper when the tip is close to. However maybe it’s a deliberate provocation, as a result of on our demise mattress what else would we flip to however recollections once we had been unburdened with the duties of maturity?
The Chronicles
Stephanie Lake Firm
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
Choreographer: Stephanie Lake
Composer: Robin Fox
Lighting Designer: Bosco Shaw
Set Designer: Charles Davis
Costume Designer: Harriet Oxley
Conductor (RISING) and Choir Guide: Renee Heron, The Yarra Voices
Producer: Beth Raywood Cross
Manufacturing Supervisor: Lisa Osborn
Rehearsal Director and Bodywork Therapist: Paea Leach
Affiliate Lighting Designer and Console Programmer: Rhys Pottinger
Sound Engineer: James Wilkinson
Stage Supervisor: Lyndie Li Wan Po
Costume Makers: Jo Foley, Fiona Holley, Emma Ikin, Kym Yeow
Dancers: Max Burgess, Rachel Coulson, Tra Mi Dinh, Tyrel Dulvarie, Marni Inexperienced, Ashley McLellan, Darci O’Rourke, Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Georgia Rudd, Robert Tinning, Kimball Wong, Jack Ziesing
Solo Vocalist: Oliver Mann
Youngsters’s Choir (RISING): The Yarra Voices
The Chronicles will probably be carried out till 15 June 2025 as a part of RISING Pageant.
