Playing for just four performances at the Perth Festival is Larsen C, from Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos.
Taking its name from the 1,000-year-old Glacier in the Antarctic, this contemporary dance work is a triumphant combination of intriguing choreography, stunning lights and perfectly matched stage and costume design.
When you hear of a dance work named after a glacier, you immediately think a slow moving and impenetrable work akin to a still-life painting might be in the offering, but Larsen C is anything but. At its core it is fast, intense, and energetic.
While equally having trance inducing moments that guide the audience into a state of reflection and introspection. One moment you’re watching a troupe of swiftly move across the stage, the next second your mind is exploding with thoughts about the speed of life, and your place in the world.
At the beginning of the work, we enter a vast and dark space. For a moment we can see a figure, but they are far off and hard to focus on. Slowly the world is opened up to us, but we can’t see everything, we are searching.
Gradually a lone dancer slowly works their way forward on the stage, their moves are awkward, twitchy, and unpredictable. It’s almost alien. Slowly more dancers join the fold, the sound builds from silence to static and white noise. Layer after layer is added, more performers, more sounds, more movement.
As this action on stage builds, so does our anticipation, it grows until it’s fast and heart racing, but not frantic. The music has transformed from ticks and pops to a thumping electronic soundtrack. The dances move as one, but they retain their individuality. In a post-show Q+A session, the choreographer compared it to a murmuration, a large swarm of birds filling the sky.
You might predict that the performance would end on a triumphant crescendo, or a return to base – slowing everything back down again. But Larsen C heads in another direction that is equally thought provoking and uplifting.
A wave of mist fills the stage and auditorium, stark lighting sees the figures of the dancers cutting through. Just above our heads the smokey mist hung, I wanted to reach up and put my hand through, punctuating the light, reaching for something beyond, something greater.
At the centre of this work is one of the most celebrated choreographers in the world. Christos Papadopoulos, recently named as the inaugural winner of the Sadler’s Wells Rose Prize, a prize that aims to do for dance what the Booker Prize does for literature.
His approach to making dance works is as intellectual and emotional as it is physical. Listening to him and his talented dancers speak in the post show Q+A made me consider that dance and other art forms might really be an essential ingredient in solving the big challenges in politics and wider society. He presented a way of thinking that needs to incorporate more of our society, creating places to ponder, consider and most importantly – feel.
The show has a total lockout, so don’t be late, or they won’t let you in.
Catch the final performances at 2:00pm and 7:30pm on Saturday 22nd February. Check out what else is on at perthfestival.com.au
