With 15 years clocked up as artistic director and choreographer at Sydney Dance Company, Rafael Bonachela has a long list of achievements behind him, including Australian Dance Awards recipient for choreography in 2011 and 2013 and winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Choreography in a Dance or Physical Theatre Production in 2015. Immersing yourself in his work, you understand why.
Bonachela’s approach is both visionary and judicious in the way he electrifies the micro and macro context of his work and impresses greatly by giving every moment and spatial context significance.
In momenta, Bonachela’s newest full-length work which premiered in Sydney earlier this year, that particular aspect is highly evident but loosely considered.
Referring to the plural of the noun ‘momentum’ as the forces gained by moving objects, momenta takes on that quality strongly across 75 uninterrupted minutes. But, as absorbing as it can be in all its dance complexity and abstracted creative entirety, why does it feel frustratingly too long?
In momenta, Bonachela’s choreography draws on a variety of elements that meld together in effortless rhythms that include ideas from the oriental martial arts, yoga and calisthenics and supercharged with the awe and beauty of artistic gymnastics. As he does so engagingly, Bonachela energises every particle in the dancer’s spatial sphere.
It begins with the erratic gesturing of a lone male dancer to the left of the low-lit stage. Ten dancers appear before him in an assemblage of ceremonial-like worship – first lying on their backs and performing with faultless synchronicity, then rising in an array of individualistic contortions.
The energy subsequently builds to include a series of brief connections amongst, what seems, a field of unpredictable fluctuations. A mist descends, smothering their bodies and a giant saucer-shaped dish of lights ascends from the floor in what becomes the work’s sole but powerful design feature.
Thereafter, Bonachela squeezes out every drop of dance’s physical potential with an array of solos, duets, trios and groupings that whip up a string of incredibly tantalising sequences. By the final section, synchronisations return and a shower of glitter falls, before the lone male dancer seemingly levitates under the dish’s tube of light.
With Australian composer Nick Wales’ magnetic and ethereal original score – featuring Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ seductive violin concerto Distant Light – in combination with Damien Cooper’s dramatic and magically inspiring lighting design, momenta has a sci-fi aura to it that might bring to mind the Steven Spielberg movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
While bookended by binding imagery of the lone dancer, between which a poetic subtlety unfolds, the work contains no real narrative.
Certainly, momenta celebrates the capabilities and artfulness of the human form in motion, assisted by designer Elizabeth Gadsby’s flesh-fitting costumes of little more than undergarments or underwear of neutral tones that reveal the dancer’s physical attributes superbly.
But a joyless, emotional distance pervades it. When performing in unison, each dancer is locked in the mechanics of the act, often expressionless as if in a brainwashed state. Even in duets and trios, bodies come together in forces and reactions as ultimately inanimate elements.
It is this aspect of momenta that diminishes in appeal over time. Only the rarest moments of human feelings are captured in this otherwise genderless collision of bodies.
Perhaps, that is Bonachela’s intention. What would a world be like where order, interaction and individual were constrained and frigid? Highlighting a pearl of emotional connection is what we ache for. But bringing a more concise approach to the work would benefit it greatly.
Not to be forgotten, accolades go to the 14 featured dancers who work with spell-binding skill and tireless dedication. In the end, they are the heroes of momenta and witnessing them in action is still well worth a ticket.
momenta
Playhouse – Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Performance: Tuesday 8 October 2024
Season continues to 12 October 2024
Bookings: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au
For more information, visit: www.sydneydancecompany.com for details.
Images: Sydney Dance Company presents momenta – photos by Pedro Grieg
Review: Paul Selar