IT'S a funny start to an evening of dance. Two microphones swing on leads, giving off a light sabre-ish sound as they pass over an amplifier. And they keep on swinging. There is no dance to be seen, at least none that involves humans. It's pretty ali
enating, but thankfully this celebration of the 25-year relationship between renowned Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and American minimalist composer STEVE REICH gets a whole lot better.
Reich's Pendulum Music is followed by his 1960s piece Marimba Phase. Again, there is no actual dance, just two musicians from the Ictus Ensemble playing in and out of time. Making the audience wait so long is a risky tactic that doesn't quite pay off.
Piano Phase, the work that introduced De Keersmaeker and her honed and toned company Rosas to the world, is an astonishing hypnotic duet. Two female dancers in simple shifts spin side by side, lifting and dropping their arms in unison and occasionally stepping out of time and then coming back together. Reminiscent of the swinging microphones or the marimbas in human form, suddenly the opener makes sense.
And it gets even better. Eight Lines is an explosive tour de force in which eight female dancers – in various pale, floating fabrics – move to individual parts of Reich's music. They walk, tumble, leap, shimmy and stand aside, smiling at one another and talking amongst themselves. It's a flawless marriage of Reich's postmodern abstraction with the high drama and restless energy of De Keersmaeker's choreography. The other works, Four Organs, Poeme symphonique and Drumming Part 1 don't live up to this sublime piece – though the male dancers in Four Organs are wonderfully athletic – but it's still a marvellous tribute from one great artist to another.
MORTAL ENGINE, by revered Australian company Chunky Move, is a different proposition. An hour-long hi-tech extravaganza, it's like watching a videogame onstage. At the end, the old Playhouse theatre is filled with dry ice and a blinding laser show ensues. The problem with this very clever, sci-fi-style piece, however, is that there just isn't enough dance and what there is feels like a foil for more technical wizardry. Six supple dancers crawl, roll and twist on an angled box on the stage, their tangled limbs creating wonderful light patterns (made possible by state of the art motion sensitive projections). Their movement is primal and it all looks fantastic, but, just like playing a videogame, the pleasure derived from it is fleeting.
