There was a great deal of local interest in this work, given Melanie Lane’s strong connections with the local dance community majorly through her work with QL2 Dance, as well as the news that next year she will take over the Artistic Directorship of Lucy Guerin Inc.
But also because the cast of Mountain contained dancers well-known to Canberra audiences in Sara Black, Yolanda Lowatta and Tyrel Dulvarie, that the work had been inspired by the Brindabella mountains, familiar to all Canberrans, and would be danced in costumes designed by Akira Isogawa.
The highly anticipated work began in a familiar place for Lane, known for her use of sculptural imagery, with the lights slowly revealing what at first appeared to be a silhouette of mountains.
As the lighting level rose however, the shape was revealed as an artful arrangement of the bodies of five tightly grouped dancers, flanked by musicians seated around the perimeter of one corner of the dance area.
Bosco Shaw and Nick Moloney’s tightly focussed lighting design allowed the dancers to be isolated when necessary, and the orchestra to be revealed strategically.
It worked brilliantly with Akira Isogawa’s extraordinary multi-layered costumes, and Chris Clark’s haunting score performed live on stage, inspiring the five highly skilled dancers to give themselves over completely to Lane’s ever-inventive choreography.
Isogawa’s ingenious costumes, fashioned from found elements, including deconstructed blue denim jeans and discarded ballet skirts, suggesting simultaneously, both the blue haze surrounding the mountains and their ruggedness.
As the work progressed, various elements of the costumes were discarded until the dancers were left in form-fitting bodysuits painted with rock-art and indigenous motives subtly referencing the mountain’s First Nation heritage.
The casting of Yolanda Lowatta and Tyrel Dulvarie supported this reference, as did a sequence involving Max Burgess manipulating long bamboo sticks.
Throughout, Lane’s choreography engrossed with its inventiveness, at times rhapsodic and always captivating, with her dancers performing her intricate sequences with effortless skill, as though transported by the music and the mood.
However, it was not only the dancers who responded in that way. Because by the time they appeared for the final sequence, their bodysuits replaced with ghostly diaphanous veils, the musicians, and indeed the audience, all seemed so enraptured by the gorgeous sounds created by Clark’s clever interweaving of electronics and live music, and the ecstatic performances by the dancers, nobody wanted the work to end.
MOUNTAIN
Playhouse – Canberra Theatre Centre, Civic Square, Canberra
Performance: Saturday 17 October 2026
Information: www.melanielane.info
Images: Mountain (Lane) – photo by Jackson Loria | Mountain (Lane) – photo by Jackson Loria | Yolanda Lowatta in Mountain (Lane) – photo by Jackson Loria
Review: Bill Stephens OAM