Cover Image: Co3 dancers deliver precision and grace in movements accompanied by the Australian Chamber Orchestra collective. Photo by Stefan Gosatti.

Co3’s In The Shadow of Time had its premiere run at the Liberty Theatre last week. A collaboration across artforms—dance, music, costume design—it is an intense and haunting work, meticulous, meditative and measured. 

Five cream-clad dancers performed on a tight two metre by two metre platform surrounded by the twelve black-clad musicians of the ACO Collective. Between them, a ghostly figure (Father Time? Death?) slowly rotated the podium and dispensed a full set of additional costumes to the dancers. For one hour, time and space were compressed into this tiniest of stages. 

Choreographer Raewyn Hill took her inspiration from the Japanese tea ceremony whereby the participants remove their spiritual baggage on the way into a small room and bring their most honest selves to the moment of ritualised communication. The tea ceremony though only engages two seated participants. Four square metres is probably spacious for them. Five constantly moving dancers were somewhat more constrained. Little wonder their movement tended to be slow and sculptural, more a gradually transforming tableaux of powerful images than frenetic activity. Not that there wasn’t a lot going on—the action was constant and layered.

The presence of the musicians on the stage added to the sense of compression. In their bedraggled black gowns, like a group of distressed academics or a murder of crows, the Collective formed an ominous, hovering presence. It was wonderful to watch the dancers respond directly to them—a violin bow and dancer’s limb moving reflexively together—but the abiding sense was one of oppression.

Moreover, part of the fascination in watching music performed is the way in which the musicians themselves respond to it. The Collective’s director/principal viola, Stefanie Farrands, is an animated performer who becomes dramatically absorbed in what she is playing. The fascination in watching her and the other musicians both drew focus away from the dance and, through their spontaneity, was at odds with the precision of the dancers’ movement.

Akira Isogawa’s costumes were dramatic and arresting. The musicians’ blacks were a reconstruction of costumes Isogawa originally designed for the ACO some twenty years ago. In contrast, the dancers’ whites were diaphanous and wraith-like—some like bandages, others like angels’ gowns. In a reverse strip tease and at odds with their accumulated perspiration, as the show progressed they donned shirts, capes and cloaks. 

The single red threads sewn into the cloaks were a lovely parting touch. Dangling free, they gave the impression of trickling blood, the accumulated cuts on the symbolically aging bodies.

In the course of the show the stage itself became an ever more active character. For the first part, set to Arvo Pärt’s Tabla Rasa: I, it remained static. From the third section on though it began to gradually rotate. At first, it was merely a regular ninety degree turn but by the final piece, a return to Pärt enveloped in a dry-ice white-out, it was in constant motion. 

Given the sculptural quality of the dance, the rotation enabled the audience to see the evolving tableaux from different angles and appreciate the 360 degree precision of the construction. The changing pace of the movement also mimicked the aging process—the older you get the quicker it goes.

Much has been said about the meanings of this work—the meditation on time, the multifarious Japanese influence, et al. There is no questioning the authenticity of this in terms of the artist’s inspiration but such strict denotation in abstract art can be difficult. When it comes to the delivery, any correlation between gesture and significance is more metaphoric than literal, open to interpretation. In some ways it is better to leave the issue of meaning aside and allow the work to acquire its own moment in the unfolding. That way it becomes a thing in the world, a resonant enigma existing on its own terms. 

In The Shadow of Time is certainly resonant and enigmatic. Like the Japanese tea ceremony, it was slow, precise, solemn, repetitive and formulaic. At times it became predictable and clinical, the ideas close to the surface. At others the clash between the elements went beyond the thematic. There was little levity, which is fine, we live in a serious age, and the performers across both music and dance bought incredible focus and attention to the detail of their delivery. It would have helped though had there been a twinkle of humour or irony, something to indicate that it didn’t take itself too seriously.

This week the show goes on a regional tour to Margaret River, Albany and Bunbury. Next month it will be presented at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, returning to its spiritual home as it were.

In the Shadow of Time concluded its Perth run on September 20. For more information on it’s regional tour, visit:
https://co3.org.au/show/in-the-shadow-of-time/