Melbourne Reviews

Mixed-ability dance company Restless Dance Company has a history of well-staged and designed dance works. They have a sensitive and engaging knack for bringing out interior mindsets/states into the open of a performance. 

Recently seen at the Adelaide Festival and now in Melbourne, Private View follows in this tradition with a gently interactive show that addresses intimacy, sexuality and desire.

Down in the depths of the Arts Centre Melbourne is The Show Room, a black box rehearsal room that comfortably houses four raised stages situated around a swath of stools. With various encasings (curtains on one, Venetian blinds on another) each stage houses a micro-performance of about 15 minutes. The offerings are unique entities with themes of longing, heartache and giddy first love threaded throughout. 

Cabaret singer Carla Lippis weaves in and out of each scenario, singing in both English and French, softly guiding some audience interjections and occasionally inserting herself artfully in the mini narratives. 

The choreography (Roz Hervey and others) is very clean and effective, not over done or over wrought. It brings out an honest and playful side of the performers/characters.

Michael Hodyl channels his best salsa self in a candidly sweet and sensitive vignette. Decked out in a three-piece suit and standing in a dining room he sets the table with candles and a single rose for his imagined date, all the while shaking his hips and dancing like nobody is watching. Lippis, a Liza-Minelli-esque, chanteuse slinks around in the background. A figure of love? A symbol of Hodyl’s longing? In a nice touch, Lippis’s record album sits next to the side table housing the record player. 

Next Jianna Georgiou and Jazzy Williamson-Gray engage in flirtatious, party vibe on a circular green couch (in appealing contrast to their hot pink and purply outfits). They let loose with sexualised physical banter as they tease, laugh and copy poses out of a retro magazine. It takes a slightly sadder tone when Georgiou is left alone and turns to an “intimacy hotline “(using old fashioned rotary phone). Here Lippis, embedded in the mass of audience stools, crowd-controls some audience participation, asking straightforward questions about sex to the flock around her (things like “How often do you think about sex?”)

But it doesn’t feel intrusive or pressured and the attempt to engage the audience is part of the intimacy. 

Bonnie Williams’s solo – a woman bank home by herself after a night out ... she’s melancholy. There’s a strong air of disappointment and angst as she undresses from a shiny gold frock, then executing most of her solo, topless in her underwear. Choreography (by Larissa McGowan) is very internal and self-reflexive with hands across face, slow body undulations of the naked torso. Lippis again is a lingering figure, this time like a shadow, slinking along the interior walls. 

The final duet with Charlie Wilkins and Darcy Carpenter is on a sofa as they flirt through emojis and snap chat (projected on a screen). Sam Matthewman (like Lippis, he floats throughout the space, although his role is less defined up until now), tries to break them up like a protective parent. But this new couple can’t get enough of each other as they spin their sofa around and wrestle through the throes of new love.

Private View utilises open captions (screens displaying all text, including song lyrics) and Auslan interpretation. Accompanying the show is a visual story book that explains things like getting to the art centre, descriptions of every aspect of experiencing the show and accessing quiet spaces outside of the actual performance room. 

Wrapped in a clean production package, with excellent design by Renate Henschke (set) and Matthew Adey (lighting), Private View successfully goes into private spaces and taboo subjects in a way that gently works with the audience. 

Being so thoughtfully constructed overall enables it to bring out the skills and nuances of each performer, letting them project their true selves.