Canberra Reviews

Elizabeth Cameron Dalman enters in sweeping red chiffon to open the space. It immediately feels ceremonial, generous, and charged with the weight of six decades in dance. In that first gesture, we already understand that ECDysis is not a retrospective, but a living act of continuation.

The work – presented in the intimate Courtyard Studio at Canberra Theatre Centre – traces Dalman’s evolution from founding Australian Dance Theatre in 1965 to her long-running direction of Mirramu Dance Company. It is a lineage danced rather than explained (although the smattering of narration from Elizabeth and guests is completely charming): excerpts of major works from the 1960s and 70s appear beside newer pieces created with long-time collaborators and guest artists from Taiwan.

Projected images ripple across a suspended veil of white fabric: archival footage from the early ADT years, including interviews with dancers who helped shape contemporary dance in Australia. The screen behaves like skin rather than scenery – permeable, breathing. The dancers move through and against this history, as carriers of embodied memory.

Those early works remain striking in their clarity. This Train, created in 1965, with the revelatory use of Peter, Paul and Mary’s tunes so pertinent at the time, still pulse with an urgency relevant today; Creation, made in the wake of the moon landing, holds that strange mix of vastness and fragility and divine human connection.

Dalman’s movement vocabulary is clearly rooted in her ballet origins with the influence of Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Laban and, most pivotally, her mentor Eleo Pomare, whose political and theatrical force can still be felt in her phrasing. Every gesture contains density, softness, and a distinct moral centre.

The ensemble who dances beside her are kin. Some have worked with her for decades. Their shared trust is visible in each transfer of weight, in the unbroken eye contact between performer and audience, in the ease of bodies that age without apology. Vivienne Rogis is a standout force, both in presence and articulation. Whilst draped in a glorious purple gown her performance is witty, sensual, and sharply alive. The guest artists from Taiwan bring an equally charged energy, grounding the work in questions of ecology, cultural meeting points and the body as archive. Every dancer is a phenomenon, and my eyes struggle to know which one to look at as they each move in their own magnificence.

Design choices are spare but evocative: elegant emerald dresses reminiscent of Pina Bausch, projected film like a membrane between eras, and costume fabrics that seem to hold air as memory. Nothing distracts; everything breathes.

What remains after the final bow is both nostalgia and renewal. Dalman stands as an energised artist who is still creating, still listening and very much still in motion. At 91, she invites us to keep moving with her. The power of ECDysis lies in bearing witness to this astounding and influential canon of art and also the decades of connections that she has made.

My date and I came away vibrantly inspired with conversation pouring out of our faces around ageing, beauty, leadership, brilliant curation, devoted ensembles and the need for important and connected performance. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman reigns as the master of all these things.

Chenoeh Miller is a theatre director, artist producer and sometimes reviewer, based on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra.