Review of AUSTI Dance's uNCOILEd eXposed 2023

Lisa Maris McDonell reviews uNCOILEd eXposed, performed at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre's Bruce Gordon Theatre from 19-21 October 2023.

uNCOILEd eXposed is AUSTI. Dance and Physical Theatre’s annual choreographic platform for emerging and mid-career choreographers, presented as part of Merrigong Theatre Company’s MerrigongX program.

This year’s offering by three young choreographers was an entertaining evening of movement, voice and physical theatre performed by AUSTI’s company of pre-professional dancers, who rose to the occasion with aplomb.

First up was Soft Mirror by probably the most experienced of the three choreographers, Bonnie Curtis.

Before the official start of the performance, women in flesh-coloured underwear and brightly hued wigs posed and preened amongst the audience. These women resembled Barbie dolls who had been well played with and were long since gifted to their child recipient. With their matted acrylic hair and long-ago lost gowns revealing a PG level of nakedness, these human dolls were at once vulnerable and yet oh so in your face.

As the work began and the women made their way to the stage, the movement that subsequently unfolded was strange, angular and, in Curtis’s own words, grotesque. The choreography for Soft Mirror seemed to originate somewhere in the realms of the sexual gyrating of hips, pouting and posturing one might see on a Tik Tok video.

It didn’t end there, however. Rather, familiar sexual gyrations were deconstructed and fragmented to the point of absurdity, the silliness enhanced by nonsensical vocalisations. This well-considered movement vocabulary was the highlight of the work and seemed to allow the dancers the opportunity to truly relax into an exploration of their femininity as something other than the usual video clip tropes.

This work was brilliantly supported by Sammy Read’s lighting design, which featured saturated pinks, purples, blues and greens, sometimes all at once.

AUSTI alumni Jessica Hewett choreographed the second offering of the night, the extremely well-crafted How Do We Know?

Clad in red and black, the dancers explored, according to the program notes, “various facets of power”. Featuring interesting ensemble work, descriptive choreographic motifs and compelling partnering, How Do We Know? appeared to be choreographed by one with many more years of experience than Hewett possesses.

The image of individual dancers, at various moments within the piece, self-satisfyingly placing imaginary crowns upon their own heads, resonates and lingers beyond the ephemerality of the work. Similarly, the sophisticated and ever-changing spatial formations remain in the memory of this viewer.

One of the few improvements that could have been made to this work, lay not in the dance itself, nor its performance, but in the program notes. Whilst the Stanford Prison Experiment was, of course, relevant to Hewett’s research when dealing with notions of power, its mention in the program notes somewhat encouraged the viewer to look for content that didn’t exist within the choreography. There is a sweet spot with program notes where the audience is given enough information to have an inkling about the intention of the choreographer, but not so much that the viewer can’t bring their own experiences and ideas to their individual interpretation.

The work itself was a truly absorbing and excellently performed work of art. Hopefully Hewett can find more choreographic opportunities in the professional arena.

To close the evening’s triple bill was Lato2x by Queensland’s Buddy Malbasias. This offering was a wonderful and slightly absurd collage of text, movement and some really great music that created something that was part game show, part fever dream.

A superb soup of otherwise incongruous happenings – the lyrics of the song Endless Love as spoken word, two women in white coats, joined at the heads by a single plait who spent almost the entire work reading out the names of audience members with a variety of vocal tones and intentions, energetic ensemble dances, an argument, interruptions to the action where everything stopped and dancers broke the fourth wall apologising for “forgetting” what they were doing, a sexy game show host and a “winner” from the audience who was required to join in the dance, sometimes following, sometimes being followed by his fellow performers. All these elements joined to create a joyous whole.

Malbasias, in again rather unnecessarily wordy program notes, likens the work to the traditional Filipino game of 'lato-lato’ – two pendulum-like balls tied to a string, that in this context represent the dualities with which our humanness presents us. For the audience, though, humour and chaos were the elements that stood out within this entertaining, beautiful mess of a work. As Malbasias is only newly graduated from his dance degree it will be interesting to see where his career takes him.

It was difficult to name any standout performances in this year’s uNCOILEd eXposed as the ensemble truly worked as a strong and coherent whole. The dancers, as always in AUSTI’s programs, were extremely well trained and polished. The evening in its entirety was nicely curated and well balanced, providing a truly satisfying night out at the theatre.