Salamander by Es Devlin and Maxine Doyle opens in Brisbane
This two-part dance work staged in a riverside warehouse is an astonishing vision of human tenacity and ferocious commitment to life.
Salamander is epic in scale yet astonishingly intimate for something so large in form and intent.
Visual art, dance, light and sound join hands in a rich piece of communal theatre that nevertheless feels like a deeply personal experience.
Part of the magic is that it’s an experience designed for only 200 people a night despite the vastness of the venue, a warehouse on the Brisbane River. For about 90 minutes – although time seems suspended – this small group observes two dreamlike visions of what the end of the world might look like.
Es Devlin, a co-creator of Salamander with director and choreographer Maxine Doyle, has made two glorious installations for the cavernous space. Only one is visible when the audience enters; the second appears seemingly out of nowhere, a trick of Ben Hughes’s ravishing lighting.
For the first half the audience stands in a square around a maze of perspex surrounded by water. The choice can be made to go to floor level or to look down on the Escher-esque sculpture.
This section takes a wide-angle view of humankind’s extinction. The world is in extremis. People in anguish appear and disappear at various levels of the maze until it’s clear survival isn’t possible. A salamander crawls its way through the water to land.
The atmosphere is one of awe and mystery. Not so in the second half, where the audience is seated almost in the round. The dancers, strikingly clad by Bruce McKinven in red, are now friends, family and lovers who connect at a long table that swirls around a fixed central point.
Water falls almost constantly on the performers, six dancers from Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective and two independent artists. All are extraordinary as they hang on to each other, slipping, sliding, running, standing defiantly or simply embracing or holding hands.
Their tenacity and ferocious commitment to life is unforgettable.
The reference point for the first half is JG Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel The Drowned World. In the second half it’s the 2021 film Don’t Look Up, in which a family chooses to sit around the dinner table together as they face annihilation. A further inspiration is Joy Harjo’s poem from 1994, Perhaps the World Ends Here, partly quoted during Salamander.
Soaring over it all is a complex soundscape by Perth musician Rachael Dease that pits the natural world against the apocalyptic. She also gives a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey in the first half with Ligeti-like sonic clouds. The effect throughout is of artistic kinship and shared concerns rather than appropriation.
Dease appears in the second half to move among the dancers and sing. Dressed in green, she is given Salamander’s final moments, which are of peace and light. This isn’t an entirely pessimistic show, as a final glimpse of the maze attests.
The salamander is the key. The amphibious creature can survive in the water and in mythology is associated with fire so at first blush it covers the bases when it comes to possible causes of extinction.
But don’t forget the salamander is also a wondrous creature that has the ability to regenerate lost parts of itself. That’s its special power. The cycle continues.
Doyle and Devlin are big wheels in theatre internationally. Bringing them to Brisbane to work with Australian artists was a brilliant move by Brisbane Festival director Louise Bezzina.
Salamander is a rare gift. It would be a crime if other festivals were not to dive in.
Salamander. Brisbane Festival. L Shed Dock B, Northshore, Brisbane, September 2. Tickets: $74-$89. Bookings: online. Duration: 95min, no interval. Ends September 24.