No one will tell us...

Rosalind Crisp with Andrew Morrish and Hansueli Tischhauser
Dance Massive
It isn't every day you have the privilege of watching artists so influential and respected in their fields. But then, sometimes such reverence comes posthumously, and improvised dance is about being present in the moment, not creating Enduring Works of Sublime Art. Or possibly that's just my sparse and academic appreciation of this Thing called Dance Improvisation?

Now Now Now

Luke George
Dance Massive
Now Now Now was my last experience at Dance Massive, and my third brush with improvisation. My first (Rosalind Crisp’s No one will tell us...) was characterised by, and fraught with, a philosophical anxiety about understanding improvised work; the second (Shaun McLeod’s The Weight of the Thing Left its Mark) saturated in a guilty pleasure at the comforts of structural, narrative, and aesthetic certainty; this third experience is still a bit of a mystery to me.

In Glass

Narelle Benjamin
Dance Massive
In Narelle Benjamin’s In Glass, Kristina Chan and Paul White are suspended in a space bordered by mirror, calling to mind the reflective and reflexive quietude of a rehearsal studio, but never particularly acknowledging this allusion. On the contrary, the work initially seems purely about organisms moving through space, sometimes impacting on each other, but rarely exploring the psychological, or the intersections of personality.
This isn’t a reprimand: Chan and White move so fluidly together that, particularly in the early sections, they are eminently watchable and there is a certain liberation in observing a physicality without persona.

The Weight of the Thing Left its Mark

Shaun McLeod
Dance Massive
Improvised work by its very nature carries an ever-present sense of risk. There will often be failures, but those who embrace working in or watching improvised forms will recognise that those failures balance the intense successes – the times where things just come together magnificently. Those successes are inherently heightened by the presence, or at least the possibilities, of the failures.

DBR and DJ Scientific: Dance Hall

Friday 25th March
Hobart City Hall
Ten Days on the Island
Is it an electric guitar, or a violin? Certainly, for the first set you may have been confused, as DBR arced about the centre of the stage, looking (and sounding) like a lead guitarist from the 1980s, channelling his six-stringed instrument and allowing it full reign.