Impermanence by Sydney Dance Company | Adelaide Festival 2021 review
Impermanence is arguably the single best piece created by and for an Australian dance company for many years.
Adelaide Festival
Don't miss out on the headlines from Adelaide Festival. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Impermanence
Dance / AUS
FESTIVAL
Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Until March 11
Most years see something exciting emerge in dance, in Australia as much as anywhere else, and a new work from Sydney Dance Company’s Rafael Bonachela invariably fits the bill.
Last year it was to be part of a triple bill, but just days before opening, COVID intervened.
A year later, a considerably expanded version of Impermanence, as the piece is called, premiered in Sydney last month to ecstatic reviews, and now comes to Adelaide. It’s easy to see why the work got such raves, for it is arguably the single best piece created by and for an Australian dance company for many years.
In partnership with the Australian String Quartet, US composer Bryce Dessner was commissioned to write a new work for the project.
We heard something of Dessner’s work in an ASQ concert in late 2019 when they performed his spectacular Ayehm quartet, used in Bonachela’s 2018 Frame of Mind. They teased at that time that they were commissioning something. Here it is.
Bonachela has crafted a superb piece on a grand scale, with different moods to each of the 12 movements of Dessner’s score ranging from thrilling ensembles for the full company to exquisite, lyrical solo, duet and small ensemble work.
The titles of the movements are revealing – Alarms, Embers, Shards, Emergency, and the like. Between these there is sometimes a direct link, others a diversion or even a retreat, but there is a clear overriding unity.
Dessner’s music is tremendously vital, whether in fast and furious explosions or intense, extended passages, and even in the unexpected but wonderful inclusion of a song, Another World by Anonhi.
The design from David Fleischer and Aleisa Jelbart, and lighting by Damien Cooper, are of a comparably high standard.
Bars, stars and festival guitars
Wanderers frontman Dusty Lee Stephensen will premiere his upcoming solo material as part of Adelaide Guitar Festival.
Festivals in the firing line amid looming city rate rise
A raft of much-loved city festivals, activations and business programs may face devastating or program-ending funding cuts as Adelaide City Council looks to lower its rates.