Melbourne Festival 2019
THE 2019 Melbourne Festival presented some substantial dance offerings with quite a few recent local works being restaged. These included the wonderful duet Split choreographed by Lucy Guerin which has toured extensively since its launch in 2017 and Stephanie Lake’s Colossus that underwent developments last year in conjunction with Transit Dance and was also staged as part of the Arts Centre’s “Take Over” development grant at the 2018 Fringe Festival. There was also Jo Lloyd’s Overture and Branch Nebula’s High Performance Packing Tape – a lovely one-man display of ingenuity and intrepid silliness, channelling very understated clown/ circus (think high-wire meets Officeworks!).
To turn to a bigger production – visiting Chinese troupe Peacock Contemporary Dance Company led by choreographer Yang Liping and her version of Stravinsky’s warrants attention. This was one of the big festival draw-cards for dance and with an Asian sensibility. Imbued with cultural symbolism and a narrative trail of sorts linked to eastern philosophies and Buddhist motifs, it is a powerful remaking of the story of ritual sacrifice, cyclical renewal through purging and making peace with the gods. It is not quite the pagan brutality of Stravinsky’s but it is still quite strident in its attack and violent imagery. It is also extraordinarily beautiful and brilliantly interpreted by the company.
