NEW HORIZONS

DANCE

4 Sept

Recently landed: New Horizons

Gracia’s written response to Bangarrra Dance Theatre’s Horizon, especially for Fjord Review.

Subscribe to and support Fjord Review.

Before digital audio, compact discs, cassette tapes with their ribbons of sound sandwiched within a small case, and pressed vinyl records, came wax cylinders to record and reproduce sound, thanks to Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the hand-cranked phonograph. As sound waves cause the diaphragm to vibrate, the wriggling needle draws a line across the surface of a rotating, hollow cylinder of wax. The needle, literally, cutting a groove in the transference of sound wave to physical recording.

As Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Daniel Mateo lay centre stage, in the opening solo, Cylinder, of The Light Inside, he became a breathtaking recipient cylinder, gently rolling, recording, encased, as “ancient and sacred stories passed through generations, with voices so powerful, they reach beyond the horizon” draw lines across his form. The past reverberates “beneath the blanket of scratches and clicks,”[i] as the recorded songs from the Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection[ii] make of him a vessel. Each cylinder holds two-minutes of sound, but like all things, such measurements belie the universe they truly contain. The same, too, could be said of Mateo’s delicately unfurling solo.

[i] Cylinder synopsis, from the first section, Gur/Adabad/Salt Water, from The Light Inside, choreographed by Deborah Brown, presented in Act 2, Horizon, Bangarra Dance Theatre program, https://www.bangarra.com.au/media/bqpnmziw/bdt-horizons-program-a5-finalweb4.pdf, p. 14.

[ii] The British Library’s Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection (C80) includes 141 wax cylinders recorded in the Torres Strait Islands and British New Guinea as part of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. True Echoes, https://www.true-echoes.com, accessed August 29, 2024.