Moth
Dancehouse
18 March 2021
Dancehouse
to 21 March
www.dancehouse.com.au
Review by Courtney Beaumont
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| Moth. Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti |
What flame are you drawn to? What gives you life and, paradoxically, death?
MOTH at Dancehouse explores the cyclical experience of life through precise looping choreography, transformative costume design and exemplary cohesive lighting and sound production.
Like moths to the flame, three dancers (Emily Shoesmith, Mel Tan and Aimee Schollum) contort and twist, fluttering towards the literal and figurative light. Searching for synchronicity within themselves, the performers move in unity as they discover the light. Director, choreographer and performer Aimee Schollum,from New Zealand, creates a devastating and raw world of destruction that explores the futility of life and the beauty that can be found in it. MOTH follows Schollum's first full length work, Sonos, which won Best Dance at the 2018 Melbourne Fringe.
The choreography is exceptional – immersive, dynamic, meditative and stressful at times as it explores the metamorphosis of the moths, who move with malleable self-assurance, unaware of their own mortality. With precise unity in movement, they are drawn to a shared flame. As it expands, they discover their personal lights, which prompts the audience to contemplate their own flames.
The repetitive, looping choreography combines bodily sounds of percussion, along with the droning original sound design by Tamara Violet Partridge. The sound design lends itself greatly to the raw, pack mentality of the moths and follows the life cycle of the moth. When danger arrives the design is heightened with sound that ignites the primal instincts of flutter and panic.
Amelia Peace’s costume design is transformative as it breathes with its own sound throughout the work. The costumes first swamp the performers, in brown and dust-stained shapeless gowns that move with the performers. Throughout the performance the costumes slowly are removed along with the moths’ metamorphosis.
The haunting world of MOTH will have you living and dying with the moths, and meditating on what it is to experience life, despite its futility. Beauty can be found in its cyclical and mesmerising transformation of life, death and rebirth.
Courtney Beaumont is a Melbourne based writer, with a background
in theatre and performance. She has worked in production for 10News, as
well as reporting for the Herald Sun in urban affairs. She currently
writes independently and is an active part
of the Melbourne theatre community.
