dance massive: intro
keith gallasch
THE FIRST DANCE MASSIVE IN MARCH (TWO MORE ARE PROJECTED AS BIENNIAL EVENTS) CELEBRATED ESTABLISHED WORKS (ENLARGING THEIR REACH), INTRODUCED A FEW NEW ONES, PUT LARGE SCALE WORKS IN THE MIX WITH SERIOUSLY INTIMATE ONES (YOUR BODY’S PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES AS CO-CREATOR) AND GENERATED ENTHUSIASTIC FULL HOUSES.
Fourteen productions over almost two weeks was ideal for fostering a sense of communality around Australian dance. The manageable scale of the event allowed audiences and a group of visiting overseas presenters and producers to build a substantial picture of the inventiveness and diversity of the field.
Dance Massive’s producers—Arts House, Malthouse and Dancehouse—commissioned RealTime to form a team to write about the works on show and the Ausdance forum introducing the event’s overseas guests. We set ourselves the task of writing not so much reviews as reflections on the kinds of experience offered by contemporary dance. Responses to the work and to Dance Massive as it unfolded appeared online each day and in print at the host venues.
In our features section you’ll find 20 responses to Dance Massive from the team (Melbourne writers Jana Perkovic and Carl Nilsson-Polias; RealTime Managing Editors Virginia Baxter and Keith Gallasch) including new assessments of Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine and Shelley Lasica’s Vianne, the Melbourne premieres of Lucy Guerin Inc’s Untrained, Splintergroup’s Lawn and Roadkill and The Fondue Set’s No Success Like Failure, a fresh look at Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham’s Morphia Series, and works by Rogue, Michaela Pegum, Jo Lloyd, Shannon Bott & Simon Ellis, Luke George and Russell Dumas, as well as Dance Massive’s party night, 360 degrees. We reproduce five of our responses on these pages.
Australia has long needed a focused national event (a multiple purpose one rather than a festival) where artists, audiences and international entrepreneurs can gauge Australian dance’s diversity, its calibre and impact. The first Dance Massive suggests it may well meet that need. RT
Acknowledgments
Dance Massive is an initiative of Arts House, Malthouse Theatre and Dancehouse in conjunction with Ausdance Victoria and with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria. Arts House is a City of Melbourne contemporary arts initiative. With special thanks to Sofitel Melbourne.
RealTime issue #90 April-May 2009 pg. 14-16
