BODYTORQUE: GRAVITY

DANCE

9 Sept

Recently landed: Bodytorque: Gravity

Gracia’s written response to The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque: Gravity, especially for Fjord Review.

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Gravity, physics tells us and the body shows, is a physical force which draws us “towards one another and shapes the way we move through the world,” and whether it is something to “resist, surrender to, suspend or redefine,” it is a necessary condition of us.[i] Gravity is the theme of this year’s Bodytorque program, featuring the choreography by Timothy Coleman, Serena Graham, Lilla Harvey, Mason Lovegrove, Pol Andrés Thió, and Maxim Zenin, led once more by the Australian Ballet’s resident choreographer Stephanie Lake. Whether making their Bodytorque debut, like Harvey, Zenin, and Australian Ballet School graduate and internationally-based choreographer, Thió, or further flexing their creative muscles, like Coleman, Graham, and Lovegrove, who have created works for earlier Bodytorque iterations, the program remains a unique and supportive “opportunity to test ideas, create a new short work, and, importantly, put it in front of an audience.”[ii]

And so, on opening night, before a full house at Southbank Theatre’s Lawler Studio, Harvey presented Holding You, her exploration of “what it means to be held”[iii] by the reassuring anchor of the familiar. To Harvey, “Gravity is what holds you in place,” that place being home. As such, the stage is lit by a standing lamp, positioned opposite a single chair. Two simple props that evoke a room for her dancers, Drew Hedditch and Montana Rubin, to inhabit. Two dancers, simultaneously, alight in the galaxy, held in fields of space, as Hedditch connects the soles of his feet to Rubin’s in an anticlockwise rotation, slowly unravelling on the floor. Joined, as if a mirror, two parts of a seamless whole, they are matter and space. “We can do a lot of spooning” sings Lonnie Johnson, “and loving by starlight.” Held in a ring of light, accompanied by Johnson’s distinctive note by note with a pick, his Looking for a Sweetie’s longing echoes Harvey’s own query: what happens if we become too heavy to hold, when “my whole life on you depends?” As Ruben arches her form up and over Hedditch’s left shoulder, her legs extend as if a shooting star, before encircling him, there is the sweet and hard of Johnson’s “am I dreaming dreams of you that’s all in vain?”[iv] There is longing in the pas de deux, and accompanying shadow silhouettes, tenderness and promise.

[i] David Hallberg, “Bodytorque: Gravity” program, The Australian Ballet, 2026.

[ii] Stephanie Lake, “Bodytorque: Gravity” program, 2026.

[iii] Lilla Harvey, “Holding You” synopsis, “Bodytorque: Gravity” foldout program, 2026.

[iv] “I’ve lived a beautiful life. It’s been kind of rough in spots; like everybody, I have ups and downs in life. I’ve seen it very sweet, and I’ve seen it very hard, when you couldn’t get a job, no kind of a job, doing nothing. But somehow or other, I managed it, I managed to make it.” Lonnie Johnson in conversation about his experiences with producer Moses Asch, Lonnie Johnson: The Complete Folkways Recordings, unreleased until 1982, 64 Parishes, https://64parishes.org/entry/lonnie-johnson, accessed 4th September, 2026.