SLOW. QUICK. SLOW

Recently landed: Slow. Quick. Slow.

Lately, animals. Lately, wildlife. Lately, dance. Wild or otherwise.

Lately, the opportunity to dive into The Australian Ballet’s triple bill, Prism, once more, and find in Stephanie Lake’s Seven Days, the connection between each dancer has grown with each variation. Whether coiled around the neck of another or upside-down, askew on a chair, sinking to the floor, the way some days fall, no matter your intention, revisiting something is a gift. With their right hands resting upon their heads, and their left hands upon their right shoulders, the dancers crinkled forward as if concertinaed over their legs in plié. Elsewhere they pitched their upper bodies at a right angle to the floor, and swayed their arms as they glided in procession. Each variation laid over itself shifted the possible readings. Seven Days springs from Jerome Robbins’s New York City sherbet-coloured heartbeat, Glass Pieces, some four decades previous, before William Forsythe, after interval, spools to unspool dancers at impossible speed in Blake Works V (The Barre Project).

In the pause between each, and in this case a repeat dip, a new reading is summoned, as one flows into the other, colouring my interpretation.

Continuing reading on Marginalia.

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14th of October, 2025

One week since they’ve come into care and the family of ringtail joeys are settling in well. The littlest of the quintet, Pansy and Pomegranate, have advanced from ‘flatties’ to fluffier, and in the familiarity of a routine, Homer, Humphrey, and Albertina are revealing more of their personalities at feed times. Between dance performances for Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Australian Ballet, and all things DanceX, it seems they grow a little more each time. So much to squeeze into the days, for us all; the theatre for us, and a-flourishing for them.