Everyman leaps into untrained territory

ARTISTIC director and choreographer Lucy Guerin finds dancers, but not as we know them.

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AARON, a 36-year-old DJ with a danseur noble's focus and a nightclub bouncer's physique, stares at an instruction taped to the floor. It reads, simply: "Backspin".

He sizes up his mark, shuts his eyes, then hurls his 110kg body through the air. His hulking form, as though in slow motion, rotates 90 degrees -- his legs seeming to take leave of his body -- before gravity draws him back to earth. His bald head strikes the floorboards with a thud and a wince escapes his body.

"Oh my god. Are you OK? Please be careful," says internationally renowned dancer and choreographer Lucy Guerin. "This is directed at everyone.

Be careful. Really. Don't exert yourselves."

It's a brisk Saturday morning in inner-city Melbourne, and in a nondescript studio just off the city's King Street red-light precinct 40 men -- myself included -- are undergoing the biggest dance audition of our lives.

We have answered an advertisement inviting men aged between 20 and 40 to audition for the latest international production from Lucy Guerin Dance Inc. There's just one catch: no experience is necessary.

By the end of the day, two of our variously inelastic and unco-ordinated number will have been selected to perform in Untrained, Guerin's male-only pro-am dance work that will tour the US later this year. The show, which pairs two professional dancers with two non-dancing everymen, will take in shows in New York and California in November and December.

"If we were looking for the best dancer among you, that'd be easy," Guerin says.

"Today we're looking to find that fine balance: someone that's not too confident but not too self-conscious. We're after character."

We are herded into the main studio where we spread ourselves generously throughout the light-filled space. Jason, a tall Irishman who has flown from Sydney, smiles nervously, nattering to himself. Daniel, a policy researcher from Melbourne, does some last-minute stretches while Jody, a diminutive rapper, leans against a window, playing it cool.

Dancer Alisdair Macindoe enters the room in a black-and-gold hip-hop style tracksuit. He and Guerin pore over notes while a videographer scans the room for talent. It seems a futile search: this studio surely has never hosted such a dearth of dancing prowess, this number of left feet, such a plethora of paunch.

"The first thing you'll notice," Guerin says, "is Alisdair's black eye." Macindoe, looking as though he has just gone 12 rounds with a pool cue, gives a purple wink, and Guerin continues: "Dance is a contact sport. He got this in rehearsals last week. Keep that in mind."

Macindoe leads the group in a 45-minute warm-up, then we're given numbers and formed into lines. The rubber-limbed artist sets to teaching the room a 40-second piece of choreography; the same steps successful applicants will perform alongside Macindoe and fellow "real dancer" Ross McCormack on tour. "Oh man. This looks awesome from here," Macindoe says as the group struggles to imitate his movements. "You look beautiful; like long grass swaying in the wind."

From where I'm swaying, it looks more like a scene from a beer commercial; indeed, earlier conversations confirmed there's more than one hangover in this room. Still, we persevere, jumping, shifting, shaping, groaning. Guerin, pencil in hand, watches each dancer intently: "Line one to the back, line two step forward to the front."

Time to shine. As per the choreography, my body quivers to the beat, arms billowing into the air and crossing in front of my face. I execute the "crazy walk" and "arm-leg cross combo" with Nureyev-like confidence, and then it happens. In the spotlit gaze of an artistic director, somewhere between the moves "spirit fingers" and "cast a spell high", my mind goes blank. The theme from Fame that has been running through my head all day seems unhelpfully to be skipping on its refrain, "Remember, remember, remember". It only compounds the misery.

My limbs regroup before the dance's denouement, the "silly shimmy", but the damage has been done. "Line two to the back please, line three step forward."

At a break for lunch, Macindoe admits that in his 20-plus years of dancing he has never seen anything like this. "It was like watching an organic re-creation of chaos mathematics," he says. "There's something spectacular about watching a large sum of people doing something similar, but not the same. It really was beautiful."

Untrained started life in 2009 as a workshop before premiering at the Dance Massive festival in Melbourne and morphing into a fully fledged and funded production that toured Australia. The work involves the two trained and two untrained performers executing the same instructions in a small square on stage. The untrained dancers mimic the movements of the professionals, and vice versa; they sing, dance and improvise, revealing physical and emotional information along the way.

Melbourne-based artist and photographer Simon Obazarnek -- brother of choreographer Gideon, the Chunky Move founder -- was one of the original Untrained dancers.

"When we started performing it on stage, I was really, really nervous," he says. "But that's actually part of what Lucy is trying to do. Audiences really relate to the untrained aspect of the show, they see themselves in the everyman." Camaraderie, according to Guerin, is a big part of the show. And it is in the air on this day. Each seemingly ridiculous act we perform is met with applause and cheers from fellow dancers.

Greg, a stocky 30-year-old filmmaker hovering at the fruit platter, is enjoying being out of his comfort zone: "For me, it's just great for once to spend a day with 40 blokes and not talk about footy or poker."

As if at the mention of footy, Guerin emerges from the studio and calls us back in our groups of six. We impersonate electrocuted cats and are given a minute to improvise, sans music. Some are asked to remove and put back on T-shirts, explaining the process in detail.

Instructions are taped to the floor: perform the robot, a song and dance, a cartwheel; a backspin. Our communal attempt at the latter, a hip-hop staple where the dancer spins on his back, better resembles a colony of inebriated tortoises than a hip breakboy troupe.

If the idea of watching 40 mostly unathletic blokes trying to execute an arabesque or a leg extension with the slightest semblance of grace sounds funny, that's because it is. As Guerin explains, laughter is an integral part of Untrained's success.

"You need to be prepared for laughs," says Guerin, who has had her fair share of muted guffaws today. "It's not malicious, but people will find you -- what you do -- funny. You'll find, though, that the untrained guys are always the stars of the show. Always."

The laughter stops at the news there will be two callbacks. I am culled in the first.

"It's true, being a dancer is a tough life," says Guerin, who performed with Danceworks and the Dance Exchange before moving to New York to work with Bebe Miller Company and Sara Rudner in the 1990s.

"As well as the structure of the audition, today also gives a good idea of what rejection can be like for professional performers."

With the original 40 having been whittled to a motley sextet, Carl, one of those remaining, sums up today's anti-audition.

"There's no way to prepare for this," he says with a laugh. "I am actually a little bit insulted that I'm still here. This means I'm a bad dancer, doesn't it?"

At 3pm, after some further physical and personal interrogation, the final six are let go, and Guerin sets to choosing her star duo. "We'll call you," she says, smiling. But she already has made her decision.

Melburnians Michael Dunbar, a tall, heavy-set 28-year-old interaction designer, and pint-sized environmental engineer Jake Shackleton, 30, are her chosen ones. They will attend Guerin's Melbourne studio for a week of rehearsals in November, before jetting off for a two-week paid stint on the American stage.

"We wanted two people who could convey a sense of who they are, accessible as people," says Guerin. "And that's what we've got with Michael and Jake."

Remember their names. A long-term career in dance is unlikely. Fame, however, is just a few awkwardly mistimed steps away.

Untrained runs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, November 27-December 1, then at the Mondavi Centre for the Performing Arts, University of California, Davis, December 6-8.