As If To Nothing: A Surreal Dance Experience by Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company – OzAsia Review

Dunstan Playhouse, Thu 22 Sep Commanding choreography combines with disjointed sights and sounds to create a surreal dance experience courtesy of Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company. Fourteen wonderfully precise dancers explore the confusing minefield that is memory; as they move together and against one another, bodies twist and curl, shudder and convulse, form, break away and reform as something not quite the same as it was before. The splendid dance composition is performed against a monochromatic set with movable pieces through and around which the dancers move. Shades of grey in costuming cleverly create a subdued palette against which the increasingly disturbed action occurs. Scratchy electronic sound, mechanical and rhythmic, further adds to the distorted landscape unfolding before the audience. Spatial perception is blurred as visual projections offer alternate, slightly delayed views of what we perceive to be going on and the result is absolutely intriguing when you consider no two seats would have quite the same outlook. This may be exactly what the performance is seeking to convey – that recollection is an organic process, shaped both by time and space. At times rather perplexing, As If To Nothing is nevertheless a stirring study of memory that will be quite difficult to forget. Rosie van Heerde As If To Nothing continues at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, from 7.30pm until Sat 24 Sep. Book at BASS on 131 246 and bass.net.au or ozasiafestival.com.au. Click HERE to purchase your tickets. Image courtesy of Isamu Murai