PIECES

DANCE

9 Dec

Recently landed: Piece by Piece

Gracia’s written response to three pieces commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc, especially for Fjord Review.

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Like two cicadas advancing, springing instep with each other, Tra Mi Dinh and Rachel Coulson manifest from the shadows of the deep stage of the new Union Theatre. Seven dances for two people, the first of three works presented as part of Lucy Guerin Inc’s Pieces, in a new collaboration with University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC), summons a world beyond as the framework of the theatre falls away, or so it feels from my vantage in the stalls on opening night. Lightly, as if winged, in Dinh’s Seven dances for two people, there may be two, but it seems a familiar buzzing chorus at the end of a hot day. A loud, buzzing chorus of cicadas to signal a united front to predators; an orchestral deterrent clicking, perhaps there is more.

More there certainly is, in the revelation of the unquiet world. As if resting in a space, scooped out among the undergrowth, shrouded in (stage) mist, the sense of more than my eyes can detect, between shadow and substance. In costumes designed by Geoffrey Watson, oversized sheer short-sleeved dresses layered atop a simple black body, the suggestion of the four transparent wings of the cicada’s form, to me, is enhanced. The silhouette—a boxy triangle for a body, two rectangles at the shoulders—reminiscent of a two-dimensional drawing of a dress and yet also ethereal, lends a ghost-like air to the newly hatched beguilement. From first position relevés, Dinh and Coulson tilt to the side, hand in hand, and prove hypnotic. Prime number seven, referenced in the work’s title, informs the rhythmic structure of the various sequences, the number of times a pas de bourée or demi plié is executed, and even, possibly, as Dinh and Coulson trace the stage in unison, the diagonal tail of the number 7 when written as a numeral. Melding fluid movements with articulated, as Dinh explains, “caught up in the sacred repetition of this insistent symbol, this duet unveil[s] itself as a reverent meditation to the number 7.”[i]

[i] Tra Mi Dinh, Seven dances for two people synopsis, Pieces 2024 program, https://www.umac.melbourne/media/pages/whats-on/pieces-2024/7fa003d039-1732764215/pieces-2024-production-program.pdf, p. 7, accessed November 29th , 2024.