REVIEWS

Stephanie Lake

COLOSSUS

ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE SEPTEMBER

Lake’s work moves into fresh and thrilling territory.

WITH its surging and ebbing bodies and driving rhythms,

Colossus takes Stephanie Lake’s work into fresh and trilling territory. With its cast of 50 (46 on opening night), this new work is dance amplified. Colossus plays freely and dynamically with the kinetic and emotional interconnectedness of individuals within and outside of a group, and gestures far beyond the human realm to patterns, impulses and hierarchies in the wider organic world.

Colossus was auspiced through the Arts Centre’s Take Over! initiative, allowing a choreographer to stage a new work at the Fairfax Studio for a week to coincide with the Melbourne Fringe Festival. This was a terrific venue for Lake’s piece – it has quite an intimate “chamber” feel which simultaneously contained the sheer number of dancers while hinting at the possibility, that at any moment, the mass might burst the confines of its prescribed territory.

Colossus starts democratically, with all dancers lying in a circle on their backs, arms raised, around the circular stage, toes fanning to the audience. A chain reaction of movements is initiated, which continues as a series of leaders begin to emerge. The group is now conjured into reaction by various individuals and pairs who orchestrate its movement. Compelled or bullied, dancers form clusters, gangs or fragmented lines and the varied formations are ever-changing in response to the bidding of those who have the floor.

The work plays out and builds through episodes of frenzied combat and co-operation. The abstracted episodes morph into one another and charge forward at a pace.

The dancers from Victorian College of the Arts and Transit Dance were splendid. Diverse and disciplined, they were testament to their own individual attributes and dance intelligence together with their training and Lake’s vision. Lake gave them a dazzling and dizzying amount of provocation and movement language. She was able to tap into their individual strengths and at the same time manage the numbers so that they were absolutely coherent as a whole.