Howdy readers.
In this blog I want to talk about milestones. And yes of course I will feature a review – of Sydney Dance Company’s most recent program Current, which was billed as a celebration of forty years in residence at Pier 4/5 in The Rocks. When I do the math, that means the move for the NSW flagship contemporary dance company occurred in 1986, which coincided with my entry into the professional world of contemporary dance, through my studies at NAISDA Dance College. Little did I know that each night, as I stepped in Martha Graham teacher Paul Saliba’s car to make the trek through the city to his ‘night job’, after a full day of classes at the college (situated in a dusty run down church in Glebe) that as I stepped over the threshold and onto the rough hewn flooring of the former dock, primarily dealing in the wool trade, some of my strongest memories of dance would be forged over the next forty years.
What former Sydney Dance Company member Paul Saliba lacked in stature he more than made up for in energy. This feisty Maltese man came to our humble urban black fella dance hub in his early thirties straight after leaving the company as a core dancer. A few nights a week it would be a shared ritual, whereby I would sit shotgun bracing myself as Saliba would literally burn over to the wharf like a Formula One racing driver to teach his wildly popular Martha Graham and Afro Jazz inspired dance classes. When I walked in with Mr Saliba I wouldn’t have to pay for class. I didn’t know how lucky I was, but I did realise in hindsight that by mixing in with the greater dance community my chances of ‘making it’ grew exponentially. This otherwise insignificant gesture was extended to, and would be taken up by many of us at NAISDA, consolidating the strong bond that still exists between the two organisations and which is strengthened by the fact that our current CEO at NAISDA Kim Walker, is an alumni of both NAISDA and Sydney Dance Company himself, as was former Bangarra Dance Company Artistic Director Stephen Page and current company dancer Ryan Pearson – which brings us to the dance season I am now to review.
Current was a quadruple bill, which operated much like Continuum in 2025, which featured Rafael Bonachela alongside Stephen Page and emerging choreographic voice in Tra Mi Dinh. Except with Current all three other choreographers besides Bonachela are independent practitioners. Like Continuum, these three choreographers in Jenni Large, Azzam Mohamed and Raghav Handa also have wildly divergent practices and objectives.
Jenni Large is growing in renown for her unabashed celebration of staunch female embodiment. Female sexuality and sensibilities are at the forefront of her expression, her works often featuring a slow burn in the build up of power and intensity of dynamics. While Alpha Mutt was decidedly more egalitarian in its betrayal of animal magnetism and ways of being, Large held onto her predilection for laboured, or weighted, pacing. Her opening was compelling with her cast of six, operating as three, emerging from the darkness as ultra slow moving sculptures. In this work, as with her Kier Choreographic people’s choice award winning Wet Hard & Wet Hard Long, the tempo revved up almost imperceptibly, while remaining steadfastly in a satisfying deliberate groove.
Large’s Alpha Mutt was a welcomed reprieve after Raphael Bonachela’s razor sharp opening duo in E2 7SD. First conceived as a film in 2004, it was reflective of the mercurial mood and emotional grit it takes to reside in the South London area code it represents. Bonachela’s intent was made clear through the excerpt of month-long recordings by the original duo as featured in composer Oswaldo Maciá’s accompanying soundscape. From E2 7SD which perfectly encapsulated Bonachela’s signature physicality that has shaped Sydney Dance Company for the last seventeen years and Large’s Alpha Mutt, whose cast of six appropriately clad in black and chains, which immediately prompted my imagination to conjure the Gothic Horror of the likes of Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, the evenings activities shifted yet again. This time to the streets…
… More appropriately, The Loft era of New York City reigning between 1969-1979. In his program notes Azzam Mohamed wrote about being inspired by a documentary titled Come As You Are which chronicles the fertile creative era that foregrounded the art experience, in opposition to commercial trappings, and extraneous activities usually framing theatrical events. In music it was the Jazz scene, and in dance it was through the party stylings of DJ David Paul Mancuso, with which the Post Modernists such as Trisha Brown of the famed Judson Church ilk, both rode and intersected.
Without the prompting of Mohamed’s notes I don’t know if I would have arrived in New York City but I did arrive at the exalted space where dance generates pure joy. Our eyes feasted as if we were listening to a juicy morsel of gossip. There exists in Azzam’s work a unifying camaraderie and his work OUR(SELF) was reflective of the kind of utopic ideal which we wish we could all aspire to. Besides my joy in seeing the mixture of B-boy, African and contemporary dance on such ultra disciplined virtuosos, it was the fact that the dancers were given permission to smile, and to acknowledge one another in small gestural ways which surprisingly outshone their individual solo moments.
Last on the Current bill was Raghav Handa with One Song. I will admit right off the bat that I was an insider in this work, providing my old outside eye and acting as poet provocateur sharing my thoughts, research and insights into the company’s history, while providing a small window to ponder the next chapters in the future of this pre-eminent organisation.
So fitting that Ryan Pearson, with whom I began teaching at NAISDA when he was a young lad of either fifteen or sixteen should emerge as the driving force in a work that celebrated the counter cultures of Paddington and Woolloomooloo (of which I was simultaneously a squatter in my last years of highschool in the infamous artspace that was simply known as The Gunnery). Ryan’s performance epitomised the come as you are attitude introduced by Azzam – on steroids. Ryan became the consummate embodied segue further expressing the gritty, scary crazy yet fierce volatile landscape from which the likes of Graeme Murphy would eventually emerge and reign. The dance itself was as Raghav had envisioned – a maelstrom of chaotic energy expressed through dancers who stepped off the stage, out of the bounds of drawn lines separating audience from participants who flew, shrugged shoulders and beat their chests into a frenzy.
Handa’s One Song was a fitting culmination to the evening, acting as a bookend, a marker closing one era, while punching a hole through this door into the next. No locks. No limits.
Join me next time for part two where I feature selected art and artists who have also shaped Sydney Dance Company.
Take a look at this video, ‘Come as you are documentary’ https://share.google/Esxn39PTxz8uWQClh
David Mancuso – Wikipedia https://share.google/gNWQFQdkSgX7mvoXL