IN PIECES

DANCE

1 Dec

Recently landed: In Pieces

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

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Piece by piece, spanning two decades, Lucy Guerin Inc’s Pieces continues to grow. An invitation extended to a selection of choreographers to give shape to adventurous ideas and create a new choreographic work within a supportive framework has expanded from a five- to ten-minute work presented in the Lucy Guerin Inc studios to a twenty-minute piece on the University of Melbourne Art and Culture (UMAC) stage. Jo Lloyd was amongst the first five choreographers invited to create works for Pieces for Small Spaces in 2005, and it seems only fitting for Lloyd to return now to the larger stage with her work Post hoc for Pieces 2025.

Making for an arresting visual, a scissor lift, with its limbs gently extended, stands in repose towards the back of the stage. Against the back cloth, the criss-crossed limbs are highlighted: smooth, vertical access ahead. And yet, it remains, a machine waiting to be operated. Perhaps this is not ‘before’ but rather ‘after’ as the title Post hoc indicates. Plucked from the Latin phrase which translates to ‘after this, therefore because of this’ and refers to the idea that that which proceeds is not necessarily linked, the scissor lift dangles as puzzle: will it be operated, has it been operated, is it related, and does it matter if I can answer any of these questions?

Flynn Dakis and Jesper Harrison move like the extended limbs of the stationary scissor lift—without the other, nothing is possible. Dakis is the left leg to Harrison’s right leg, the left arm to Harrison’s right. In costumes designed by Andrew Treloar, they are also a mirror image of each other. With one short sock on their left and right legs respectively, and one long sock on their other legs, they stitch together to make a whole. Their briefs, too, leave one chilly (presumably, I project) left or right cheek exposed. This playful lopsidedness runs counter to their precision. Two Victorian College of the Arts graduates, their movements are finely honed. Together they make and move as a machine. A machine of criss-crossed limbs, but this human machine moves, where the scissor lift does not. Facing each other, with one arm repeatedly swinging and connecting with the small of each other’s back, the contrast is as pronounced as it is mesmeric.