Sydney Reviews

Sydney Dance Company’s Current brings together four distinct choreographic voices, and while Rafael Bonachela’s work is, as always, dreamily lovely, for me the highlights were absolutely the three commissioned choreographers: Azzam Mohamed, Jenni Large and Raghav Handa.

Bonachela’s E2 7SD begins with two figures moving within a spotlight. It is intimate and sensual, their bodies almost always in contact – but at times seemingly tearing themselves away from each other. There is a power and conflict in that magnetism: the pull towards another body and the force required to separate from it. The sound is exquisite – breath, whispers and fragments of voice woven through the movement – and there is something beautiful about watching two bodies remain so intensely attentive to one another.

Jenni Large’s ALPHA MUTT takes us somewhere altogether stranger. Suspended bodies emerge from darkness. Figures appear in black with flashes of skin – backs, arms – before the light reveals something unexpectedly playful and almost horror like. The dancers are pulled, moulded and arranged into strange shapes; at times the imagery reminded me of Monika Tichacek’s 2005 work The Shadowers. It is weird, sexy, surprising and completely compelling. Every movement and section feels unexpected. Outstanding.

Azzam Mohamed’s OUR(SELF) brings a growing sense of play. Individual personalities begin to emerge from the ensemble and, as the work develops, so does a feeling of community. There is joy, respect, sassiness and fun. The dancers seem genuinely connected to one another. A dance-battle motif gradually becomes something communal rather than competitive – bodies held by other bodies. The specificity of the gesture and movement language is a delight.

Raghav Handa’s ONE SONG closes the program and feels almost ceremonial. Dancers spin, search and look; the music has the quality of horns and prayer-like vocals. There is something powerful in watching the ensemble continually gather, separate and find one another again. It is erratic, sweaty and passionate, yet somehow held. A lone figure walks the periphery, as though everything we are seeing is taking place within some larger ritual.

Having seen Large, Mohamed and Handa dance themselves in the past, I did find myself missing their physical presence on stage. Each has such a particular performance quality that I wanted, perhaps greedily, to see their bodies inside the worlds they had created. At the same time, there is something exciting about seeing their choreographic languages translated through Sydney Dance Company’s extraordinary dancers.

And perhaps that is what stays with me most from Current: a sense of bodies in relationship. Bodies touching, carrying, shaping, challenging and supporting one another. Bonachela offers intimacy and magnetism; Large gives us strangeness and surprise; Mohamed, play and community; and Handa brings the evening home with trance like ritual.

Mohamed, Large and Handa are the revelation here – distinctive, generous choreographic voices, and I left wanting to see much more from all three.