Rock star’s powerful dance to music of time is a stunner

A show featuring 17 dancers and four musicians that had to be abandoned due to the pandemic has finally received its triumphant world premiere.

Sydney Dance Company and the Australian String Quartet performing Impermanence. Picture: Pedro Greig

• Echoes of a golden age
• From idyll to nightmare
• Black tea with dash of bourbon
• Blistering night on record

A show featuring 17 dancers and four musicians that had to be abandoned four days before first night due to the pandemic has finally received its triumphant world premiere.

Sydney Dance Company emerged from Covid hibernation to give a stunning performance of Impermanence, with music by US composer and rock star Bryce Dessner written as a reaction to footage of the Australian bushfires of 2019 and performed onstage by the Australian String Quartet. Choreographer Rafael Bonachela and his troupe brought gasps from the sellout audience in an hour-long masterclass of precision, strength, urgency and grace where perpetual motion matched the powerful non-stop 12-piece score.

Dessner’s work had two calamities as its backdrop. He and Bonachela were in Paris to discuss a collaboration when the Notre Dame blaze happened, prompting the Nationals guitarist to think about the impermanence of history, architecture and our lives in the face of a disaster. Then a few months later he was watching TV coverage of the December bushfires while he worked on the music. The titles of each short movement reflect the crisis unfolding – Alarms, Embers, Shards, Emergency, Requiem-Ashes – and the piece finishes with Another World by Anohni (formerly Antony and the Johnsons).

MINIMALIST

The distinctive waver of her voice on the lines “I need another world, this one’s nearly gone” made for an unforgettable ending.

Lighting (Damien Cooper), stage design (David Fleischer) and Aleisa Jelbart’s costumes all added a minimalist and evocative layer to the riveting marriage of action and music.

Rafael Bonachela’s choreography drew gasps from the audience. Picture: Pedro Greig

The ASQ performed wonderfully with leader Dale Barltrop sucking in some deep breaths after the relentless stabbing bowing of Emergency. Dessner’s composition, which features additional electronics by David Chalmin, is in the minimalist style of Philip Glass and Terry Riley and is heavily influenced by Middle Eastern riffs and rhythms, reminding this reviewer of some of the Kronos Quartet’s world music recordings.

The ASQ has gone through a change of line-up since the original show was planned for 2020 with cellist Sharon Grigoryan and violist Stephen King moving on to new things. Guest violist Christopher Cartlidge, from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, filled in for King, who will still work with the ASQ as Director of Engagement and Learning. This was a Sydney audience’s first chance to see the quartet’s new cellist, Michael Dahlenburg, in a show which put everyone – dancer and musician – literally through their paces.

Impermanence runs until February 27.

DETAILS

● SHOW Impermanence

● STARRING Sydney Dance Company, Australian String Quartet

● WHERE Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay

● WHEN February 17

● SEASON Until February 27