SAMSARA and LARSEN C - PERTH FESTIVAL

By VICTORIA LAURIE

February 24 2025

LARSEN C, Perth Festival at the Heath Ledger Theatre, Theatre Centre of WA, 22 February 2025. (4 stars)

SAMSARA – a Cine-Concert, Perth Festival at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth (4 stars)

BY VICTORIA LAURIE

It seems odd to describe a dance performance as a work of art but there seems no other term for Larsen C, a highlight event of Perth Festival. Usually, there’s a particular dance move or a stand-out soloist that makes dance memorable, but rarely does the totality of the performance seduce the imagination and compel you to keep looking, looking, looking.

Trying to describe this spectacular piece by Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos is like watching the movement of a sea anemone and trying to spot which tentacle recoiled first. In fact, the analogy with marine life is apt; a tight formation of six dancers (Maria Bregianni, Georgios Kotsifakis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Alexandros Nouskas Varelas, Danai Pazirgiannidi, Adonis Vais) bends, recoils, drifts and extends in the way that the anemone does, a living organism whose parts are individuated but bound by their unity.

The dance is mesmeric, from the moment a shard of light falls on a single dark form in perpetual motion. As it shuffles, it grows limbs and a head as light paints a larger canvas.  

Larsen C  is the name of a monumental Antarctic glacier that broke off and inspired Papadopulos to consider how even static-looking forms like the iceberg are endlessly jiggling, jostling the ice foreshore. I prefer the choreographer’s other allusion to passengers in a train or bus, all of whom are performing individual movements – turning a page, looking out the window. All of a sudden, their movements are united by a greater force: the impact of bus brakes or a sharp, sudden turn. “For me this bigger movement of the world around the system is choreography,” Papadopulos says.

The six dancers are spellbinding in their separate unity, slender arms swaying left and right as if on a swell, bodies sliding sideways, heads tilting seconds apart with tiny, unique inflections – like the anemone at the touch of a finger. As the dancers rhythmically surge out and regroup, you wonder at their movement, like a shoal of fish or a flock of starlings – following a plan?

The excellence extends to exquisite lighting and staging (by Eliza Alexandropoulou and Clio Boboti) which locates the dancers in highly unconventional spaces bounded by odd low horizons or chambers of light set in deep gloom. The alternately rough-textured and refined electronic soundtrack (composer and sound designer Giorgos Poulios) has a matching abstract aesthetic. This is the essence of Larsen C’s appeal, an artist’s deep meditation superbly executed.

SAMSARA: A Cine-Concert comes from another part of the world yet radiates a similar mastery of content and execution. Bali attracts many holidaying Australians, but cultural exposure is often limited to a quick trip to Ubud for Balinese dance or a temple visit to watch the sacred monkeys steal tourists’ food.

This one-night-only event was a double treat – a “cine-concert” conceived by one of Indonesia’s most celebrated filmmakers Garin Nugroho. It was like attending an old-fashioned picture show with live music – in this case, a magnificent gamelan orchestra of around thirty musicians, Gamelan Yuganada, three Balinese singers, and a popular Indonesian electronic duo Gabber Modus Operandi, all arranged onstage at His Majesty’s.

Behind them was a large screen, on which was shown Nugroho’s latest film, Samsara, silent and black-and-white, set in 1930s Bali based around a famous folktale. With subtitles, the audience is introduced to the story of a man from a poor family who strikes a bargain with the Monkey King in order to marry. It’s a pact that gains him wealth and a wife but dooms their child to be claimed back by the monkey monarch.

The story is set in a Balinese village and employs traditional dance, masks, and wayang kulit puppetry, even featuring the comic routines of a local seer and her sidekicks. Nugroho cast two stars, Indonesian film actor Ario Bayu and Indonesian-Australian dancer Juliet Burnett, to portray the ill-fated lovers. They are every bit as telegenic and smoulderingly sexy as any 1930s cinema icon, and Nugroho’s beautifully framed scenes – in a forest, on a lava mountain or in a temple - are as sharp as cut diamonds.

Burnett’s fine contemporary dance adds a modern touch to the powerful ritual dances of the Monkey King and his cheeky tail-swinging tribe, played impressively by Balinese boys. When Nugroho and Burnett joined their exuberantly smiling gamelan musicians on stage, the large audience erupted in a frenzy of applause.

In a city where it takes less time to fly to Bali than to Sydney, Samsara makes you long for more such rich encounters with the art forms and traditions of Indonesia’s past and present.