Colossus
Stephanie Lake Company
5 October 2019
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 6 October
www.festival.melbournek
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| "Colossus". Stephanie Lake Company |
Colossus was given the competitive Arts Centre Melbourne and Melbourne Fringe Take Over commission for 2018. This gives the company the resources, support and previously almost-unheard-of opportunity to take over the Fairfax Studio area and create a new work. It also makes connections with the most independent of theatre festivals and the venue at the peak of arts in our city. The Melbourne Fringe season of Colossus sold out and was regularly talked about as an unforgettable show of 2018.
MIAF director Jonathan Holloway said at a media briefing that the only way he could see this show that so many people were talking about was to book it for the festival. It sold out again.
Melbourne-based choreographer Stephanie Lake formed her own company in 2014. She became known in Melbourne for her work with Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc and has worked with many Australian and international companies and had work in international festivals.
Colossus is a work that couldn't have been made without the the support of a bigger organisation. There are 50 dancers in black on a stage that is a bit bigger than size of 50 dancers lying arm to arm, feet to the centre, in a circle. They are young and emerging dancers and are performing in an international festival.
Working with so many dancers is rare; I can't think of a contemporary company that is able to create with so many people.
For all of this alone, the work is so unique that you can regret not getting a ticket.
The bonus is that it's exquisite and impossible to look away. It begins in stillness, in that circle of dancers, and one movement creates momentum and energy that comes in waves that gently lap and tsunami and breaks apart and joins together until it eventually collapses. It's like a physics lesson as movement from one dancer creates movement in the next, and individuals swarm in masses or and break away for a moment before return is inevitable. No one is more important. No one is not important. The community are as much the art as its creators.
The community is also Robin Fox's composition that is almost inseparable from the movement as it follows and leads when it needs to, and Bosco Shar's lighting that creates a world that interacts with the dancers interacting with each other. It's stunning. The floor and walls are white. Sometimes shadows are created by light, but there are bodies between the source and the wall and at times it looks like there are shadows of shadows as height and depth and shades of grey change and move as the join and cross and fade.
It's so difficult to create work with a large cast, but Colossus has been seen twice now – and that's not enough.
