‘IN Cognito: Ballet at the Quarry’, West Australian Ballet
Quarry Amphitheatre, 10 February 2023

With Valentine’s Day upon us yet again, West Australian Ballet’s latest Ballet at the Quarry season, “IN Cognito”, dishes up a selection of heartfelt works on love, longing and loss. “IN Cognito” pushes technical and artistic boundaries, delivering choreographic works that showcase a company running at peak performance.

Open Heart Story, by Melbourne-based choreographer Alice Topp, is an affecting exploration of how we often take for granted the heart’s physical and emotional precarity – until it breaks. A slick, shiny artery of red cuts across the stage, over which the dancers play out scenarios that our beating, pumping, vulnerable knot of life-giving muscle continuously endures.

Open Heart Story unfolds as a series of duets, trios and quartets. Featuring a costume for the female dancer that is a roadmap of arteries, the opening duet is emotionally haunting, and was exquisitely performed on opening night by Glenda Garcia Gomez and Oscar Valdés. Also of note in this casting were Julio Blanes’ solo, and Chihiro Nomura and Matthew Edwardson’s duet, both of which were performed with precision, passion and artistry.

Jon Buswell’s gorgeous lighting coupled with Luke Howard’s pulsating score, generates an immersive atmosphere that complements the ensemble’s sliding, shoulder-popping and undulating movements.

Brief and bittersweet – much like life itself – sums up Verses, the next work on the program.

Created by Polish choreographer Robert Bondara, Verses is a duet about loss, sorrow, longing and loneliness, and reflects on the loss of memory and emotion we link to loved ones over a lifetime. The couple’s heart-wrenching movement is laid bare under Buswell’s deliberately stark white lighting. On opening night Kiki Saito and Juan Carlos Osma performed this pas de deux in perfect synchronous harmony to Ólafur Arnald’s melancholic score.

Bondara’s second piece of the evening, Persona (in reference to psychoanalyst Carl Jung), is another work that delves deeply into the human psyche.

Inspired by writer Witold Gombrowicz, and his claim that “to be man means never to be oneself”, Persona was created in 2011. The work focuses on the relationship and tension between being yourself and functioning within sociocultural norms, and how we adjust and mask to operate within those norms.

Persona depicts the conscious and unconscious manipulation of ourselves and others in everyday life. The physical manifestations of the mind are played out in the choreography, with the dancers leading, coaxing, teasing, crushing, pulling, pushing and contorting the bodies of their counterparts. In the cast viewed dancers Alexa Tuzil, Jack Whiter and Ludovico Di Ubaldo performed the work with great virtuosity, and were mesmerising to watch as they physically manifested the internal psyche.

The lighting and score of Maciej Igielski and Arvo Pärt respectively, combine to generate a psychoanalytic mood and atmosphere that reveals a trio of minds chasing needs, wants and understanding.

The last work of the evening, Helen Pickettt’s IN Cognito, is a work inspired by writer Tom Robbins and the theme of incognito that runs through his books. IN Cognito is a highly technical, whimsical and light-hearted work that grabs your eyeballs and won’t let go. Precise timing, technique and comic sensibility are an absolute must for this piece to work, which the WAB dancers manage to brilliant effect.

From the moment that a shrub is sharply thrust onstage from the wings, the absurdist tone of the work is immediately set. The dance move “flossing” is appropriate, as is a hilarious and precisely timed group dance on a modular sofa.

Les Dickert’s rich lighting state, filled with overlapping green and purple tones, together with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Mikael Karlsson’s delightfully playful score, manifest a surreal office waiting room experience.

In its entirety, “IN Cognito: Ballet at the Quarry” is an excellent evening of dance performed by a high calibre, world-class company of creators and performers.

“IN Cognito: Ballet at the Quarry” continues until 11 March 2023.

Glenda Garcia Gomez and Oscar Valdés in Alice Topp’s ‘Open Heart Story’ for ‘IN Cognito’. Photo: Bradbury Photography