MOVING MEMORY

DANCE

4 Oct

Recently landed: Moving Memory

Gracia’s written response to James Batchelor’s Resonance, especially for Fjord Review.

Subscribe to and support Fjord Review.

I make my way up the stairs at the Substation. Along all four sides of the large room, rows of seats are arranged. Event warning: sudden loud noises. Content warning: death. I find a seat along the long side wall, with my back to the window. With the red curtains open and the night sky at my shoulders, I wait. Also sitting and waiting, several of the performers. They are dotted about the room, in pairs, sitting cross-legged on the floor. They are onstage, but not quite yet. They are waiting. Identifiable by the translucent fabric that cloaks their forms, they scan the room. Make eye contact. And set the tone for the celebration, the reason I am here and, I am guessing, others too. To celebrate “dance as a vital language of friendship, community and continual transformation.”[i]

Presented as part of Melbourne Fringe, after premiering in Sydney as part of Idea ’25, and next Canberra bound, James Batchelor’s “Resonance” is a “living tribute that connects past, present, and future dancers” in light of choreographer Tanja Liedtke’s death in 2007. Supported by the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, together with Dramaturg Bek Berger, Batchelor connected with “the people that knew Tanja’s work best. Through listening, tracing, and gathering an archive embodied as a network in the form of collaborators, conspirators, partners, friends: Sol Ulbrich, Sophie Travers, Fenn Gordon, Shane Carroll, Kristina Chan, Paul White, Anton, Amelia McQueen, Julian Crotti, Josh Tyler, Craig Bary and many more.”[ii] At 29-years-young, Liedtke “left an indelible mark on the dance community, and this work responds to that resonance,”[iii] for the body is a vehicle for memory.

[i] James Batchelor and Collaborators, Resonance synopsis, Resonance programme edited by James Batchelor and Chloe Chignell, September 2025.

[ii] “Developing and nurturing these relationships was at times challenging and non-linear. The weight of Tanja’s memory and the complexity of grief were an inextricable part of the process. Yet so was the joy in remembering.” James Batchelor, ‘Fates Intertwined: Transforming Liedtke’s Archive’, James Batchelor website, https://www.james-batchelor.com.au/writing/fates-intertwined-transforming-liedtkes-archive, accessed 2nd October, 2025.

[iii] James Batchelor and Collaborators, Resonance synopsis, Resonance programme, 2025.