THREE: Strong, imaginative, charismatic – this is both intimate and grand

These three works by the Australasian Dance Collective ask for, and deliver, deep wells of emotional and physical engagement.

Limbic by Cass Mortimer Eipper. Three, Australasian Dance Collective 2022.

Individually,Cass Mortimer Eipper, Kate Harmon and Gabrielle Nankivell would be welcome on any contemporary dance program. Together they are a formidable gathering of Australian choreographic talent.

Each made a work for Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective that would repay second and third visits. Each had a newly commissioned score by an Australian composer. Each credited the ADC dancers with co-creation of the choreography and showed those dancers to be strong, imaginative, charismatic artists. These are no small things, particularly within the context of a small company. The works asked for deep wells of emotional and physical engagement, and the six-member ADC ensemble was heroic. Bravi.

There was no getting away from the fact, though, that the work would have shone more brightly on a more varied program. With electronic scores, no set, the same lighting designer, low-key costumes and, as it happened, the same dancer opening each piece, there was an inevitable sense of sameness.

Mortimer Eipper’s Limbic was driven by the fact that much of what we do is a result of unconscious impulse. Harmon’s Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall came from the opposite direction, that of conscious decisions about the degree to which we connect with others. Nankivell’s The Incandescent Dark took a more metaphysical approach to existence and perceptions of time and space.

Limbic had an arresting opening. Lonii Garnons-Williams ran across a pool of light to a huddled group on the other side of the space. She leapt, they caught her, she was held aloft and then subsumed into the little mass. The outer had become inner.

From there, Alyxandra Dennison’s electronic score – lots of beeps, white noise, some clubby beats and sampled voices – was the accompaniment to a display of how bodies move and react. It was a pleasure to see them, particularly elegant, sinuous Lilly King.

Even when moving in unison, in pairs and even in an entwined trio for the men of the company, the dancers exuded a sense of cool separation. They were within themselves as Mortimer Eipper delved into something that is experienced by everyone but is essentially unknowable and untransferable.

Harmon’s Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall (the title is from a Robert Frost poem) celebrated the messiness of finding ways to get on with one another. To an electronic score by Anna Whitaker that sounded enjoyably like a day at the wrecker’s yard, bodies tangled and hung off one another. They made unstable human pyramids, were thrown to the floor, dashed around like children in a schoolyard and dispersed like atoms in a centrifuge.

Several brief, radiant duos emerged as surprisingly emotional connections were made and unmade. The gentle ending glowed.

Nankivell, working as she so often does to a score by Luke Smiles, finished the program with the deeply moving The Incandescent Dark. It was a numinous piece, full of intricate detail, that seemed to exist outside of time and in a vast universe.

Carried along by Smiles’s dense, powerful, slow waves of sound, individuals came and went with private moments of reflection or came together and exploded apart like fireworks.

That something could be so intimate and grand simultaneously is a wonderful mystery.

When taking over at ADC in late 2019, artistic director Amy Hollingsworth said her annual triple bill would feature a local or younger artist, an established Australian dancemaker and an international work. It was a sound idea, seen last year when ADC could finally get its first – Covid-delayed – iteration of THREE up.

That obviously went by the wayside for 2022. Perhaps next year.

THREE, Australasian Dance Collective. Brisbane Powerhouse, July 14