Cover image: Rehearsal still of In The Shadow of Time. Credit Artshoot Media

It is testament to the strength of the contemporary dance ecology in Perth that Co:3, the newest yet highest profile of the three major companies working here, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. To round out this milestone, the company is presenting the premiere season of founding artistic director Raewyn Hill’s major new work In The Shadow of Time.

I caught up with Hill earlier this week to talk about the many elements that have gone into making this work but before getting to that it is worthwhile reflecting briefly on the broader dance ecology.

Over the past thirty years, the contemporary dance scene in Perth has evolved to best fit the needs of local creatives and audiences. Not since the 1990s, when the Chrissie Parrot Dance Collective formed the hub of a dynamic dance scene, has a company been able to survive here on performances and touring alone. The three major companies—in order of age, STRUT, Link and Co:3—deliver programs that combine mainhouse performances with mentoring, support for independent artists and training. This balance ensures that the artform maintains a strong profile and each company has a broad and stable support base.

Co:3 (pronounced ‘Koh Three’), in many ways the successor of the Chrissie Parrot Dance Collective, comes closest to the traditional model of a contemporary dance company. As artistic director, Raewyn Hill is not only a curator, facilitator and teacher, but an artist in her own right. She balances the management of an extensive outreach program with the creation of original work. Crucially though, she only creates a new work every other year. This allows space for the company’s support activities and suitable time for the development of a mainstage show while avoiding the risk of creative overload, a danger that has played out all too often in the contemporary dance world.

2025 is Hill’s year, and rightly so. In the Shadow of Time, a collaboration with the Australian Chamber Orchestra Collective and Japanese-born Australian fashion designer Akira Isogawa, opens at the Liberty Theatre next Wednesday (17 September) and runs through until Saturday 20. The Perth season will be followed by a regional tour of Margaret River, Albany and Bunbury after which the show will be taken to the World Expo in Osaka.

Set on a revolving circular stage, six dancers explore the theme of time’s inexorable impact. As Hill puts it, “the shadow that trails behind us and lies just out of reach”.

Through its constant repetition, the work becomes a meditation on aging, resilience and the other unforeseen forces of time. Hill hopes it will bring the audience to a point of “quiet recognition”, where they feel time’s weight, beauty and relentlessness.

“The rotating stage makes time visible. There is no pause, no reset. The dancers must move with it, fight against it, surrender to it. Time loops, folds in on itself.”

Both in this theme and through the realization of its many component parts, the rhythm of time echoes deeply through this work.

There is a strong Japanese influence that is the culmination of a process that began for Hill in her youth. The costumes for both the dancers and the musicians have been recycled and reworked from Isogawa’s extensive 30-year archive while the collaboration with the ACO, the first between the two companies, sees the intersection of the orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary with Co:3’s tenth.

The Japanese influence sits at the heart of Hill’s artistic practice.

Studying Japanese at high school in New Zealand she came to be fascinated by both the language and the people.

“The Japanese love New Zealand, the two countries have similar environments—islands, mountains, climate—and there were always many Japanese tourists around.”

As her career in dance unfolded, her fascination grew. Working in different places around the world, she kept wondering when Japan would come up. It wasn’t until her third year at Co:3 that a scholarship from the University of Melbourne enabled her to spend three months research and development in Tokyo. This proved to be a big moment in her life.

In Japan she met and worked with some key artists, including Butoh master Yoshito Ohno. This began a three year journey in the embodiment of Butoh which unlocked a new technique of communication. “I came to better understand what I wanted to say in my choreographic work.”

On a return trip she was invited to attend a traditional tea ceremony—she found the emotion of it profound.

“The detail of the ceremony, the preparing of the tea, the stillness and the emptying of unnecessary movement was striking. The idea that you hang everything on the hook outside the tea house and open up to the other person in that moment became the core of my curiosity.”

On this trip she also experienced a ‘white-out’—being on a snow-covered mountain when a cloud rolls in. “Everything in the distance was disappearing yet I could still see the things right in front of me. It was like sitting inside memory.”

The influence of Butoh, the precision of the tea ceremony and the effect of a white-out are all reflected in the new show.

The final pieces of japonica are Akira Isogawa costumes.

Born in Kyoto, Isogawa moved to Australia in the late 1980s. He established his own fashion label in the 1990s. Early in his career he designed some of the ACO’s bespoke costumes. These along with pieces selected from the full range of his work have been adapted for In the Shadow of Time.

Hill says of their collaboration:

“Working with Akira was like stepping into another world, like stepping into poetry. We spoke about transparency, layering, recycling, reimagining, and the traces of time. We wanted costumes that felt lived-in and delicate. Looking through his archive was like walking through memory. These pieces hold stories and now take on new meaning in the bodies of the next generation of musicians and dancers. It is a beautiful embodiment of the work’s themes.”

The next thread in this rich tapestry is the collaboration with the ACO.

The ACO collective is an offshoot of the main ensemble. Of the twelve musicians performing here, four, including the director and viola player, Stefanie Ferrands, are permanent members of the company. The other eight are emerging artists. This integration allows for the transfer of ideas and experiences from one generation to the next.

The music—Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and John Dowland—has been carefully curated to fit with the theme of time. Each composer brings something different.

”Pärt gives stillness and sacredness. Glass offers pulse and repetition. Dowland brings melancholy, intimacy, longing, grace.”

Significantly, the musicians will be on stage with the dancers throughout the performance. As Hill sees it: “The music isn’t accompaniment; it’s a living force. To create with musicians present, responding in real time, surrounding the space elevates everything. It’s intimate, breathtaking, and rare.” 

Touring with the musicians to regional WA will also be a major experience. Hill looks forward to taking live music into the regions where “the chamber orchestra brings dance and the dance brings music”.

The final element in the show is Mark Haslam’s lighting design.

Haslam and Hill have established a deep rapport working together at Co:3 for many years. In this show, the lighting is “sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, often mysterious. The confined space of the rotating stage allows light to sculpt the dancers in profound ways. It makes the work appear like a painting.”

Isogawa’s costumes, the musicians playing live on stage, the movement of the dancers, and Haslam’s lighting have all been intricately woven together. Hill is looking forward to seeing how the dynamic will unfold and evolve in the course of the run.

“It should be a living breathing experience. There is nothing improvised about what the dancers are doing or the musicians are playing. That already exists. But in how it’s delivered, every day will be different, it’s energy new. It’s not an improvisational work by any means but dance is nothing more than energy moving through space. And of course it’s also what the audience brings to it. Live performance is so sacred.”

It is major achievement that Co:3 will be performing In The Shadow of Time at the Australian pavilion of the World Expo in Osaka. Unfortunately the ACO will not be joining them but Co:3’s presence in Japan will further consolidate the company’s profile on the national and international stage.

Hill is justifiably proud of what Co:3 has achieved over the past decade and what they are now about to deliver. With the possibility of further national and international touring as well as other major collaborations to come, the company is on the precipice of great things.

‘What a joy it is to bring the ACO to Perth and to collaborate with them and Akira Isogawa to create a significant piece of work. To then take it on a regional tour with the musicians is huge.’

To follow this with tour to Japan completes a creative cycle many years in development. It is certainly a milestone in the history of this vibrant, now established yet still young contemporary dance company, the fitting culmination of its tenth anniversary year.

Tickets for In the Shadow of Time are available through Try Bookings.