TREASURE

Canberra Dance Development Centre

Canberra Theatre

Saturday 25^th August 2012

By Bill Stephens

MIDNIGHT SYMPHONY
Canberra Dance Development Students
Georgia Powley (Centre) Hayden Baum (Left) Nick Jachno (Right)
Photo: Greg Primmer
 

Canberra has no shortage of excellent dance schools.  Around this time each year, these schools present their annual showcases, which not only provide students with goals to work towards, but also parents and family with the opportunity to see what their children have learnt during the year. For parents looking to enrol children, they also provide an excellent opportunity to compare the standard of the schools.

Though the Canberra Critics Circle does not review these annual showcases, we sometimes attend because, not only do the best of them provide excellent entertainment, they also offer an insight into dance trends, and perhaps even an opportunity to spot a future dance star.

Earlier in the year I attended a performance in Llewellyn Hall given by students of the Canberra Dance Development Centre, in association with the Canberra Youth Orchestra, of “Romeo and Juliet Suite No.2”, which had been choreographed by CDDC principal Jackie Hallahan, and which I wrote about on this blog. I had also interviewed dancer/choreographer, Paul Knobloch, for the Artsound FM 92.7 program “Dress Circle”.

Knobloch is an ex-student of CDDC who became a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet, before dancing with the Bejart Ballet in Lausanne. This year he joined the Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco where he is a principal dancer. At the time of our interview he was home on a short break from LINES Ballet and giving master classes and workshops at the Canberra Dance Development Centre. During our interview he mentioned that he had also taken the opportunity to choreograph some items for inclusion in “Treasure”. The opportunity to see an example of Knobloch’s choreography provided extra impetus to have a look at the work of this particular dance school.    

“Treasure” proved to be quite an extravaganza with more than 300 spectacularly costumed students demonstrating their prowess in 48 items during the evening. The performers ranged from adorable tiny tots making their first stage appearances to senior students about to embark on professional careers. No doubt it was probably a nightmare backstage for stage-manager extraordinaire, Dot Russell, but from the audience, the show ran like a dream.

“Treasure” had a theme inspired by Mother Teresa’s poem “Life Is” with the 48 items loosely connected by the story of a woman’s journey through life.  Not all the connections were obvious; however the transitions between the numerous scenes were imaginative, quick and efficient, accommodating an astonishing array of dance styles and even a vocal ensemble item performed by the dancers.  

Hayden Baum dances "Cowboy"
Photo: Greg Primmer.

Along the way there was a welcome opportunity to revisit some excerpts from “Romeo and Juliet Suite No.2”, including Jackie Hallahan’s exquisite pas de deux from this work, beautifully performed by two senior dancers, Georgia Powley and Hayden Baum. Hallahan had also choreographed a delightful light-hearted solo for Baum, “Cowboy”, which cleverly showcased his excellent line and confident classical technique.

 

As it turned out Knobloch had choreographed several items including a spectacular ensemble classical ballet “Midnight Symphony” (pictured above) which opened the second half of the program. Beautifully costumed, “Midnight Symphony” was a superb showcase of classical ballet technique in which Knobloch had made few concessions for the youth of the dancers. It was excellently danced and would have done a professional company proud.

Georgia Powley dances "Spider"
Photo: Greg Primmer

Among his other contributions to the program Knoblock had choreographed an extraordinary, acrobatic solo "Spider" for Georgia Powley which she performed superbly.

 

 

 

Nick Jachno dancers "Prisoner"
Photo: Greg Primmer

 

 

He also choreographed a moody, gymnastic piece called "Prisoner" which provided a compelling vehicle for the developing talents of  Nick Jachno.

The choreography of both of these pieces was well bove the standard expected in a student presentation, but both the young dancers proved up to the challenge. 

 

 

 

 

 

These were not the only examples of excellent choreography in “Treasure”. Several of the teaching staff had contributed items to showcase various levels of achievement by the young dancers, and apart from those already mentioned, those I found particularly impressive among the 48 items were Joanne James’ exhilarating ensemble tap routine “The Musical”, and Renee Hallahan’s spectacular finale numbers “Life” and “Far and Away”.

Canberra Dance Development students perform "The Musical"
Photo: Greg Primmer

As for spotting a future star, watch out for Hayden Baum, a young man with all the attributes needed for a successful dance career should he so choose. His excellent all-round training was obvious throughout “Treasure” where his excellent stage presence, superb classical ballet, contemporary dance technique, his attentive pas de deux partnering skills and obvious delight in performing the tap dancing routines were a joy to watch.   

No doubt everyone in the packed Canberra Theatre had spotted their own special star among the hundreds of enthusiastic performers and of course there were many other dancers who displayed huge potential, and many who probably have no intention of pursuing a career in dance, content just to enjoy the thrill of having their own special moment in the spotlight on the Canberra Theatre stage.

Canberra Dance Development students perform "Life"
Nick Jachno (Centre)
Photo: Greg Primmer

Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins

Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins.  Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company co-production at Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, August 29 – September 1, 2012.

Review by Frank McKone
August 29

It’s a bit weird, I know, but Biggins’ name always reminds me of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien and English culture.  So watching Australia Day reminded me of an English comic playwright, famous for The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn.

In 1974, critic Eric Shorter wrote “The latest [Ayckbourn play] is called Confusions and consists of five sketches in a typically jaunty manner which have no bearing on each other but which again exhibit the author's delicious sense of humour in droll abundance.”  In fact, in my view, the second last of the five, Gosforth’s Fête, is not as frothy as this sounds, just as Australia Day is more than a witty spoof of country town incompetency.

The odd thing is that the plot of Gosforth’s Fête is almost the same as the second act of Australia Day (was Biggin’s channelling his English heritage, or borrowing from Ayckbourn?), but the social satire says that Australia is indeed very different from the Mother Country.

Both plays involve a conservative politician, a public occasion in a village/country town, speaking over a public address system which is accidentally left turned on to reveal dastardly behaviour as a tremendous thunderstorm explodes all around.  The details of the two plays are, of course, a little different, but the comic elements work beautifully in both.  The difference is how the central characters – Gordon Gosforth and Brian, the mayor of Coriole (all the Australian characters have only first names) – end up as the forces of nature and human failure reach their last gasp, and the audience’s last laugh.

The English Gosforth turns into a Hitlerian dictator, or at least would like to.  Brian, on the other hand, realises his ambition to micromanage and manipulate everything and everybody is justifiably washed away in the final downpour. 

Ayckbourn effectively warns of the dictator at the core of English whimsy.  And I suspect the Lord of the Rings makes the same point, though Tolkien and Ayckbourn were personally on opposite sides politically (Ayckbourn still is, though Tolkien died in 1973).

But, the Australian Liberal Party Mayor, Brian (played by Geoff Morell) , seeking preselection for a Federal seat, and his political opponent  Australian Greens Party, Helen (Alison Whyte), reach an understanding on two levels as the roof of the marquee caves in: respect and empathy are the keys to a workable community,  and honesty in politics is preferable.

After the laughter, Ayckbourn leaves a nasty taste about English life, which ironically our ex-pat Rupert Murdoch has tapped into since Gosforth’s Fête was written.

Biggins recognises our political game-playing, but leaves us with the good taste of common sense and compromise which can be distilled from the Australian culture.

Theatrically, Biggins’ Act 1 doesn’t match up to Ayckbourn’s playlets which lead up to Gosforth’s Fête in Confusions.  Eric Shorter seemed critical of their having “no bearing on each other”, but Ayckbourn was writing in the days when absurdism had moved on from an esoteric theatre form after World War II to the popularity of The Goons, The Goodies and Monty Python.  When I directed Confusions each of the first three playlets built the mood of impending disaster which came crashing down upon Gosforth, which is followed by a reflective Talk in the Park.

The short scenes in Act 1 of Australia Day, as the Committee meets over the months before 26th January  (or 25th March, or October – who knows?), the characters are introduced and divisions between them are laid out, but there need to be more clues, like an Agatha Christie mystery, which would lead us to talk during interval about the possible developments.  But without enough direction in the plot, we found ourselves over coffee and champagne without much to talk about, though much to laugh over. 

And much to appreciate in the performances.  But we were concerned that the role played by Kaeng Chan as Chester, an Australian born teacher of Vietnamese refugee parents, appeared, in the first Act, as token rather than of equal value.  But when it came to Act 2, Chester comes through as the most rational, the best organised, with the least personal issues and certainly incorruptible (after all, he is a teacher), alongside the rough-mouthed dogmatic, but truthful and practical Wally (powerfully played by Peter Kowitz),  the old-fashioned but genuinely caring CWA lady Marie (Valerie Bader, bravely wearing a “numbat dreaming” costume, who reconciles Wally and the Green feminist Helen), and finally the honest Robert (David James) who stands up to the culture of political manipulation (revealed over the public address system via CB radios which he thoughtfully imagined would make things go more smoothly), and who makes it clear that he is happy being a deputy rather than being corruptly made mayor.

The Coriole Australia Day Committee being democratic meant that all the actors were equal, and they certainly performed as an exemplary team.  The plot, as the Day itself turns to mud, flood, thunder and lightning, enlightens us about the Greens’ agenda.  Helen outmanoeuvres Brian, as Alison Whyte matches Geoff Morrell.  It is fair to say that here is where Biggins goes one better than Alan Ayckbourn, just as Baggins wins honourably against the Lord of the Rings.  (I won’t try to push this envelope too far!)

Rather than the sense of deep absurdity in English life leading to a simple, if horrific, conclusion – the final cynical words, in Talk in the Park, are “Might as well talk to yourself” – Australia Day brings the complex inanities of Australian life to a positive conclusion where we have seen professional give-and-take among the actors, between the actors and us in the audience, and finally among the characters of Coriole.  The play, more subtly than Gosforth’s Fête, represents the life of its culture.  This Australia Day is certainly not a disaster, whatever the forces of nature – human and atmospheric – bring to bear.

Footnote: Alan Ayckbourn went on to write 74 plays so far; this is Jonathan Biggins’ first ‘proper’ play, but he is already famous for the annual Wharf Revue.

Thoughts on: God/pool (no water) /Midsummer Nights Scenes /Ngapartji Ngapartji /South Pacific /The Memory of Water.

Thoughts on: God/pool (no water) /Midsummer Nights Scenes /Ngapartji Ngapartji /South Pacific /The Memory of Water.

by Alanna Maclean

Seen a lot in the last few weeks and feel the need to comment on a few shows.

Everyman Theatre’s sharp and funny double bill was a ‘letting the hair down’ kind of night with directors Duncan Driver and Duncan Ley having a lot of theatrical fun, first of all with Woody Allen then with the rather nastier humour of English playwright Mark Ravenhill.

God is a piece of anarchy with a Woody Allen-type character at the centre of it. Philosophy and history and Classical Greek theatre come into it, but basically it’s a bemused look at existence and theatre with the poor old Actor (Jarred West) in the middle. He has to cope with the ego of Hepatitis (The Writer) (Duncan Ley) as they try to put on a play that involves some of the usual suspects – The Fates (Euan Bowan and Amy Dunham). The Guard (Zac Drury) and The King (Euan Bowan) while the ‘know nothing/know it all’ Chorus (Wayne Shepherd) lurks around (mostly upstage avoiding trouble).

This got the fast and furious treatment with clever updates and local references making it a good warm up for the real meat of the evening, Ravenhill’s pool (no water), an absorbing, funny yet repellent exploration of morality. A group of friends reunite with a friend who is a much more successful artist than any of them, despite ambition, can hope to be. Are they her friends? Is she theirs? Jarred West, Steph Roberts Amy Dunham and Zach Raffan worked as a tight team, almost at times as one entity, as the play twisted its way through complex viewpoints. All of this was done on a very spare set with multiple locations often suggested by the movement and position of the actors themselves. Their movement was sometimes as convoluted as the twisting plot.

There’s always a sense of assured theatrical polish and intelligence in an Everyman show.

CYT’s A Midsummer Nights Scenes worked in a rougher, more risk taking way but left a similar sense of intelligence. For two nights only the Teen Ensemble set Shakespeare against the screen, running pieces of A Midsummer Night’s Dream against an intriguing selection of recent film takes on love. A cunning set put characters like Hermia, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius and Oberon, Titania and Puck into the local multiplex where their forest struggles with love and jealousies and misunderstandings were played among the vocal popcorn eating audiences for films like Titanic and Ever After and Four Weddings and a Funeral. As should be the case the whole lovely tangle was topped by a grand Pyramus and Thisbe, with a stalwart female Pyramus offset by a Thisbe who brought the theatre to a hush when he took off his wig and reverted to his usual voice partway through the finding of the dead Pyramus. The boy actor became the boy and the tragedy struck home.

Big hART’s Ngapartji Ngapartji has had notice before in this blog but it sat beautifully in the Canberra Playhouse, reminding audiences not to forget what was done at Maralinga. (I used to feel very reassured that the British had ‘tested an atomic device’. At least it wasn’t an atomic bomb, I would tell myself.) Trevor Jamieson is an unforgettable storyteller, as he was in Namatjira. Poetic, important, unmissable work.

South Pacific has had enthusiastic reviews and as a child audience for the first Australian production where father was driving a follow spot in Sydney I certainly found myself absorbed. I was struck back then by two things, Bloody Mary (Virginia Paris) being hypnotic in Bali Hai and the bloody great brooding volcano of Bali Hai on the backdrop.

Opera Australia opted for much less brooding and a rather visually pallid approach to the robust light and vegetation of places like Vanuatu but I suppose this is a post modern approach. At least it was uncluttered and the set changes went with a speed that ought to be studied by any theatre group still in the throes of the black out and the black clad holding up the action. Yes, the Opera House does have quite a deal of stage machinery that helps but there are ways.

However, Teddy Tahu Rhodes’ deep and effortless voice as Emile was worth the trip to Bennelong Point and the sections of typescript MSS from James Michener’s Tales from the South Pacific which were on the opening and closing act drops were grand and moving. I kept wishing the audience would stop to read them. But no, it was musical comedy time at the preview and they were mostly chatting to their neighbours and singing along with the overture and even applauding at various points in it. I also wish our audiences would learn to wait until a number has actually finished before clapping. As for the disastrous practice of clapping along with the music, yes, it surfaced in South Pacific (bet Teddy Tahu Rhodes never gets that in Don Giovanni). I know the male chorus encouraged it in a bit of pre act two business and it was not happening during the singing, but it is an intrusion even during curtain calls. 

As musician and humorist Martin Pearson once said while ticking off a Canberra audience with similar proclivities, ‘I might try it without your kind assistance…’

Everyman Theatre’s Two Comedies: God by Woody Allen directed by Duncan Driver /pool (no water) by Mark Ravenhill directed by Duncan Ley at The Courtyard Studio Canberra Theatre Centre, July 19-28.

Midsummer Nights Scenes  Directed by Alister Emerson and Craig Higgs. C-Block Theatre, Canberra Youth Theatre. Gorman House, August 24 -25.

Ngapartji Ngapartji  http://www.ngapartji.org/

South Pacific http://www.southpacificmusical.com.au/?gclid=CNTZ-vzhi7ICFbBUpgoddlgAIA

And here’s a link to my Canberra Times review of another recent excellent production, Canberra Rep’s Memory of Water.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/execute_search.html?text=alanna+maclean&ss=canberratimes.com.au

Shakespeare Lives....

By Alanna Maclean

Never underestimate the vitality of Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare has just been in town with a Macbeth with a very spare and contemporary approach.

Meanwhile a film based on Macbeth called Shakespeare Must Die has recently been banned in Thailand.

Updates are nothing new for the look of a Shakespeare of course but what happens when his plays are being viewed by those for whom English is not the first language? (I don’t include the moanings of decades of English speaking students who have generally gone from Shakespeare illiterate to Shakespeare literate once they got themselves on stage doing it.)

Late in 2011 I was doing a workshop about Shakespeare in Thailand at Makhampom Theatre’s Chiang Dao centre. We’d called it Shakespeare in the Rice Fields but it really didn’t end up being about that in more than a metaphysical way. We were in the main theatre space there, which is like a long, two-storied version of the New Globe in London surrounded by water and sitting in the middle of the rice fields. Because the sides are open in the daytime the rice fields become a background. You are never, in that place, unaware of agriculture. (Or architecture)

Makhampom’s Richard Barbour was a bit nervous about language since it looked like the group were going to be all Thai (The non-Thais had not come to Thailand for the big Makhampom Theatre Reunion Forum fortnight to find out about Shakespeare). So was I but only because my Thai is still only enough to navigate a market, a restaurant or a taxi ride. I’m a long way from following the snappy dialogue of a satirical likhe play with any kind of comprehension. However, I’d just spent two weeks teaching drama to Akha students in Chiang Rai and had confidence as always in the Thai translator, what mutual English and Thai we might all muster and the goodwill that always accompanies Makhampom. 

As for Shakespeare’s language, we weren’t going to be tackling that except for the occasional short key quotation. If I’d chosen Hamlet the key one might have been ‘To be or not to be’.  Or the Ghost’s ‘Remember me…’. The intent was to work on the two turning points in The Winter’s Tale,  ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ (the only stage direction in Shakespeare that I am inclined to trust) and the scene where Hermione’s statue comes to life at the end and Leontes says ‘O she’s warm’.

The group were frank about what they saw as their lack of knowledge. ‘We know Baz Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet’ they said but actually there’s much more Shakespeare in Thailand than that and they showed that they knew about Hamlet and Macbeth at least by name. And one of the Thai kings, Oxford educated King Rama VI, translated three of his plays (The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet) into Thai. I even once glimpsed the casket scene from The Merchant of Venice being done by a school group in a Bangkok mall.

What they came up with in a two hour session (that extended into a longer discussion) were a couple of moving and accurate responses to the two scenes, underpinned by lifetimes of training in Thai movement and performance styles. As for the language, it became Thai for the purposes of the afternoon and much could be said about the way clowns seem to be universal. This group rightly brought the man eating bear and the clown seeing it all and the people drowning on the ship sinking at sea all on stage. We don’t know what Shakespeare’s theatre did with ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’, but the group bought right into the theatricality of the scene. The sound of the drums scraping across the concrete floor, accidentally discovered and incorporated, was a nerve-racking addition to the bear’s slow motion meal. 

I admit to having to hold back any interference when the group put a very 1960s bucket hat on the head of Hermione for the statue scene but when it ran in performance she echoed the 1960s Queen Sirikit who came with the king to Australia and dazzled my generation with her glamour. Again, the emotion of the moment was there. And for an hour after we were supposed to finish we were all still there, talking about what the session had uncovered about ways to work on a daunting text by targeting the key moments.

If you want some idea of the epic stories that drive Thai performance then they can be found among Makhampom’s contemporary performances. Elements of the Thai Ramayana  (the Ramakien) surfaced during the many Thai performances at the Forum as did Buddhist and folk tales.

These can also be seen in a variety of much more commercial theatre pieces in Bangkok. Shows like the royal sponsored Sala Chalermkhrung and the huge Siam Niramit are a good introduction to the Thai sense of the epic as is the Phuket Fantasea, complete with acrobats over the audience’s heads, a procession of elephants and a bevy of live chickens. The Joe Louis Puppets may have to be hunted out from wherever they are now based, having lost their old Bangkok theatre, but I’m sure I spotted some of their half life size puppets each with two to three operators at the Thai Festival in Sydney a few weeks ago.

There’s also a contemporary ‘black box theatre’ scene that is well worth searching for. Patravadi Theatre over the river in Thonburi stages some good examples of this but there’s also lovely socially acute work done by Makhampom in their tiny converted beauty parlour in Saphan Kwai (‘behind the police post where the bomb went off ‘) and by powerful groups like the Butoh based B-Flor. You won’t find most of this in Lonely Planet but a search of the internet and an eye on the newspaper arts pages might just send you down a dark alley to see Thailand’s theatre of the now.

Shakespeare might not always feature (I did once see a Thai version of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther at the Crescent Moon theatre in the Pridi Banomyong Institute) but if he does, rest assured he will be bent to Thai needs and views.