Epic dance of the extraordinary
The Age
Wednesday March 23, 2011
A new work examines real lives changed by remarkable events, writes Philippa Hawker. 'WE'VE done a lot with ordinary lives in previous works," says Kate Champion, "and I think we wanted to look into something that had epic potential." Champion is artistic director of the innovative Sydney dance company Force Majeure, which is bringing its latest production to Melbourne as part of the Dance Massive festival.There are ordinary lives, as it turns out, at the centre of the work. Not in a Million Years explores the stories of real people to whom something remarkable has happened. Among them: a man who woke from a 10-year coma and spoke lucidly to his family for 16 hours; a flight attendant who was the sole survivor of a plane crash, falling thousands of metres into the snow; a woman who won €š37 million in a lottery yet felt her life had been destroyed by it; an Olympic athlete who broke the record in his event by a margin that seemed almost unbelievable."We all lead necessarily quite predictable lives," Champion says, "so there's a morbid, almost perverse fascination with the totally unpredictable." The work, which encompasses dance, image, music and words, was created with fellow company members and longtime collaborators Roz Hervey and Geoff Cobham.The first stage of its creation involved an exhaustive process of research and discussion the three carried out together. After research, Champion says, "we philosophise, fantasise, use our imaginations, our curiosity, to go into what can be behind and around something". Thinking about the man who awoke from the coma, for example, she wonders, "Left alone for 10 minutes, what did he really think about coming back?"After the research, "Roz and I set physical tasks that, without telling people what to do, provide a framework to the framework to head towards a physicalisation or a characterisation . . . You can start very simply with something like: how do you relate with an unconscious body that is your husband's? How do you have a sense of intimacy? How do you take out your frustrations?"Then, says Champion, it was in the course of thinking about the nature of the epic, "that the polystyrene came into the picture . . . For the design, we thought there might be one overwhelming element that could serve and illuminate all the stories."What they came up with was a simple yet immensely flexible device: a huge heap of white polystyrene flakes that the four performers use in a range of ways. "We realised they could take light very well, and could be projected on," Champion says. They can create a snowy mountainside, or the lottery winner's overwhelming burden, "and they can be a metaphor for being in a coma. Being covered in something that's light and that absolutely buries you gives a sense of being locked into your own body."What the stories bring to an audience, she says, involves much more than idle curiosity or a sense of the bizarre. "Something is transferred, I think, through these examples. I never want to tell people what they should feel, but I believe they really do give a sense of human potential."Not in a Million Years is at Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, on Saturday and Sunday.dancemassive.com.au
© 2011 The Age