Friday March 29, 2024
6000 MILES AWAY
Review

6000 MILES AWAY

March 11 2013

6000 Miles Away, Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 8-15 March 2013. Photos by Bill Cooper: Sylvie Guillem.

Sylvie Guillem CBE is now 48 years old and is arguably the greatest creative force in contemporary dance. She's not a choreographer but, instead, seeks to collaborate with the best of them. They make works inspired by the long, muscular, malleable body and its vital fierce intelligence and the results are invariably unique and almost always magical. 

With 6000 Miles Away she has gathered together three pieces - 27' 52", by the Czech Jiri Kylian, Rearray by US-born William Forsythe and Bye, by Sweden's Mats Ek. From reading what has been written overseas about this show it seems that while she has performed Rearray and Bye as a double bill, a shortened version of 27' 52" - danced beautifully by Vaclav Kunes and Natasa Novotna - opens this touring program. It's a reasonably interesting way to fill out a full length evening and also saves the fabled Guillem legs for - frankly - what the punters have come for.

Rearray is where the evening really starts. To a liquid score of musical objets trouve by American composer David Morrow, Guillem works with Massimo Murru to demonstrate with sublime artistry that in order to break the rules (of classical ballet) as she has been doing for decades, she has first ensured that she is the mistress of those rules. The flowing series of movements, attitudes struck momentarily and half glimpsed snapshots of the classical past become a kaleidoscope of memories and invention as the lighting causes whirling limbs to blur and burn on the retina. Rearray is the piece for purists while the last is possibly not.

6000 MILES AWAY

Mat Ek's Bye is humorous, poignant and cheeky. It's a solo piece although Guillem begins as a screen image and continues to play with and behind it. Set to Beethoven variations that stray as far from their source as the dancer herself, Bye is as much theatrical as it is dance. In the intense physical discipline and acute attention to detail required by the living dancer and her pre-recorded self it's a reminder of her recent collaboration with Akram Khan (about the tiniest instants and movements as well). And also of the unforgettable and wickedly minimal solo piece she performed to Ravel's Bolero on a much earlier (first?) visit to Sydney.

Sylvie Guillem is a giant and at the same time, with thanks to Arundhati Roy, she is the Goddess of small things.

 

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