BODYTORQUE: NEW WORLD RECORD

DANCE

8 Nov

Recently landed: A World Turned Upside down

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

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Records are for keeping. A record of the past in permanent form, an account. An official report. The sum of past achievements. The best, most remarkable event of its kind, a world record, no less. A record, too, a thin plastic disc which carries sound in the grooves of its surface, unlocked by the needle of a record player. Records can be ‘set straight’ or entrusted ‘off the record’. To record is to remember, to commit to memory. So what then of a New World Record? What springs to mind? Well, to Adam Elmes, Yuiko Masukawa, Benjamin Garrett, Jill Ogai, Erin O’Rourke, and Serena Graham, when tasked with creating new choreographic worlds from such a prompt as those three weightier than might first appear words — ‘new’, ‘world’, and ‘record’ — what sprung to mind was a diverse medley of the humorous, sporting, cyclical, and recurrent history. Or in the words of Resident Choreographer and making her debut as Bodytorque Mentor[i], Stephanie Lake, “inventive, current, funny, smart and surprising”. And so six choreographers afforded the framework, as Lake described, “to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks,”[ii] did just that on a Thursday eve in the newly carved, black-box space, The Show Room, at the Arts Centre.

Hunkered between the Playhouse and the marble-filled walls of the Amcor Lounge, the space might be intimate, but The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque program, now in its 20th year, called for a big, broad, challenging theme. A chance to create a new world record in a different vein to the recent Guinness World Record for the largest assembly of dancers en pointe within a minute[iii]. A chance, as Coryphée Elmes explored in his first choreographic work, “Champing at the bit”, to work it “until you vomit”. In this playful work, to open the program, Elmes coached, by overhead voiceover, “don’t turn your head. Don’t trip. Pump the legs”[iv], layering an ‘in the studio’ vibe to Ergo Phizmiz’s electronic composition Worldwide Waybill. Working Annabelle Watt and Bryce Latham, later superseded by Larissa Kiyoto-Ward and Isobelle Dashwood, Hugo Dumapit and Samara Merrick, until they expired, “who will you be if you can’t keep running?”

[i] Either before or after each of the six performances, each choreographer joined Lake on stage for a brief, heartfelt Q&A, that, together with the intimacy of the 150-seat space, leaned in to Artistic Director, David Hallberg’s earlier welcoming address to friends and family. Fresh from Circle Electric, many sighted the experience of working with Lake as an inspiration, in addition to her mentorship.

[ii] Stephanie Lake, The Australian Ballet Bodytorque: New World Record Melbourne foldout program, 2024.

[iii] The record originally set in 2019 by 306 dancers was beaten in April of this year by 353 dancers assembled in New York City’s Plaza Hotel.

[iv] Adam Elmes, Champing at the bit synopsis, The Australian Ballet Bodytorque: New World Record, 2024.