Cover image: BUTTERFLY EFFECT. Photographed by Stef King and VML. Dancers Juan Carlos Osma and Alexa Tuzil.

Butterfly Effect by Alice Topp
West Australian Ballet
His Majesty’s Theatre
Wednesday, 10 September

Newly commissioned by West Australian Ballet, Alice Topp’s Butterfly Effect is a moving narrative work centring a feminist portrayal of love and living with mental illness. Crafted with a bold, diverse range of choreographic tools, it follows the ups and downs of relapse and recovery with modern-day protagonist Charlie, and how these experiences intertwine with her closest relationships.

Alongside composer Jessica Wells’s slow-building and cathartic re-imaginings of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly score, Topp’s movement vocabulary is unafraid to break convention. Combining classical ballet qualities with compelling realism, floor work and contemporary storying with the body – Topp’s portrayal of living with PTSD is beautifully dignified and layered, always centring former-soldier Charlie’s own voice as her perspective journeyed through uncertainty, fear and assumed betrayal toward the inevitability of healing with time and peace.

Butterfly Effect’s design is remarkably modern. Set in regional Western Australia, it combined sound from natural environments with a dynamic sky (set and lighting by Jon Buswell) that evolved through bright blues, dusk purples, and heart-warning orange hues. Dancers wear relatable clothes (costumes by Aleisa Jelbart) – outdoor shorts, feminine overalls, and modern print fabric reminiscent of everyday upper-middle-class Australians.

The familiarity of locally-inspired scenes is a delightful asset to the work, which in every step and pantomime celebrates individuality and realism. The highly intentional creation of each individual onstage represents a kind of care, depth and self-actualisation that has long been missing in conventionally flat representations of gender in full-length ballets.

Enlivening this score was the impeccable intentionality of the dancers, whose roles involved not only physical theatre and more contemporary partnering and solos, but many key moments of acting and carefully placed pedestrian movement.

Expanding the worlds of Charlie’s inner voices, Alexa Tuzil created a world of focus around small isolated hand movements, expressionism-like breadth, and discerning shifts between Charlie’s insularity and confidence. In addition to enthralling and grounded contemporary partnering with Tuzil, Juan Carlos Osma moved convincingly through many distinctive images of excited husband-to-be, friend, and later exhausted and isolated father.

Indiana Scott’s rendition of the couple’s friend Katie was transfixing and highly-considered. Through repurposing traditional ballet motifs into modern expressions of female friendship, the complexities of supporting a friend who is absent from her child were conveyed with mindful precision across divergent moments.

Heath Kolka was a dynamic breath of fresh air as Katie’s partner, whose larrikin high-fives and positive energy later softened into being a truly sensitive mediator during Charlie’s worst moments. To me, this complex role conveyed some of the healthiest, most nuanced representation I’ve ever seen of masculinity in ballet.

Charles Dashwood brought a direct and sprightly energy as a hard-faced commander, whose exacting and athletic tones created a contrasting background to the central characters’ journeys. And Jack Whiter was a perceptive duet partner as Charlie’s doctor, in a gentle portrayal of Charlie seeking her own agency across striking and organic counterbalance.

A particular strength in the work was also the role of the protagonist’s child Maddie – performed with clarity and focus by Clara Rimmer. Through Topp’s careful storying and structure, this character conveyed volumes of loss or reconnection with a single gesture, which audibly shocked or humbled last Wednesday’s audience throughout.

Butterfly Effect is based by Madame Butterfly – a story that’s inspired mainstage work across the western canon for over a century, while also romanticising sexist and racist contexts of power imbalances in its original narrative. In a courageous and rewarding contrast, Topp’s re-interpretation is a compelling story of love built upon respect, balance, and many nuanced representations of healthy relationships persevering through trust and genuine care.

As an underrepresented presence in ballet theatres, I’m used to feeling alienated by what I see onstage, but did not feel socially inferior in any moment of this work. I felt it had already critically considered its own context, and role-modelled how to share epic stories without taking up space in or degrading other people’s narratives.

Butterfly Effect is also the first full-length work of choreographer Alice Topp. This significant commission demonstrates the value and importance of supporting local – and particularly women – choreographers to take risks, explore new dimensions of ballet through contemporary voices, and be supported to embark on a new career stage.

Butterfly Effect is not only a powerful narrative work of its own, but also a transformative testament to how a culture like ballet can move beyond the sexism it has notoriously enshrined for centuries. In a world struggling to resolve its own conflicts and division, works like this enable the empathy, generative agency, and critical self-awareness we need.

Butterfly Effect runs at His Majesty’s Theatre until 20 September.

Disclaimer: One of the lead performers in this work is a movement teacher of the writer’s.