As Melbourne’s week of
climate strikes drew to a close, Hofesh Shechter’s Grand Finale was
staged in Melbourne’s State Theatre. There could not be a more apt tip of the (melting)
iceberg of a week of protests than this dance piece, which explores what waits
for humanity following ecological and social disaster.
A decade ago, the
Israeli-born, UK-based choreographer brought his self-titled Company to
Melbourne for the first time with Uprising and In Your Rooms. After
returning in 2013 with the world premiere of Sun, he arrives back on Australian shores in
2019 for the Melbourne International Arts Festival. While the wait has been six
years too long for Melbourne’s contemporary dance fanatics, all was forgiven
once the curtain closed on what could be his most profound work yet.
A notable figure in the contemporary dance scene, he has choreographed and composed a dance, theatre and live music piece with Grand Finale that traverses a spectrum of emotions over the course of a short hour-and-40-minutes.
Ten dancers — dressed in what can only be described as comfortable, beige, apocalyptic attire — move with unity and disparity all at once.
Ten dancers — dressed
in what can only be described as comfortable, beige, apocalyptic attire — move
with unity and disparity all at once. There is a constant push and pull; they
are fighting yet helping one another, loving and hating each other.
Shechter presents a
world teetering on the brinks of collapse in a storyline that hits a little too
close to home. One can’t help but draw comparisons between events on-stage and our
own confronting climate crisis and fraught socio-political landscape.
There are moments that
speak so clearly without using words. A sequence where the female dancers are
limp rag-dolls, their male companions in denial, moving their bodies as if to
imagine them still alive. You can feel the pain of denial, loss and longing
through the dancers’ intimate connections with one another.
Another scene imagines
a night-club, the continuous flailing of limbs and rolling of heads to the beat
of an electronic soundscape akin to a night out at one of Melbourne’s own dusk-till-dawn
venues. At this moment of the performance there was nothing I wanted more than to
join in with their erratic movements and absorb some of their serotonin.
While the dancers battle their individual (and combined) mortality, a quintet glides across the stage. Dressed in tuxedos two cellists, a violinist, guitarist and melodica player are the maestros to an impending disaster. Think of the quartet that played as the Titanic went down.
The compositions swerve between biblical melodies, tribal beats and Tchaikovsky.
The compositions
swerve between biblical melodies, tribal beats and Tchaikovsky. A melodic
fluidity guides the audience’s emotions between anguish, contentment, elation
and fear. As bubbles fall from the sky, the dancers are in love, the band is
playing merry tunes and for a moment, the surrounding chaos ceases to exist.
Following a heavy
first-half, the quintet positioned themselves in front of the curtain and
lifted the audience’s spirits. This was a welcome mood-fluffer, with the
musicians performing as if they were entertaining commuters on the London tube;
offering a small dose of happiness to over-worked, dreary members of society.
While the second-half
of Grand Finale failed to keep up to the ferocity of the first, it
offered a coy optimism. Tom Scutt’s set design is simple: a few moving, black
panels. What do they represent? Only the creative team of Grand Finale can
tell us, but perhaps they represent a humanity moving through a dead ecosystem,
like the dancers, simply trying to exist.
While contemplative in context, Grand Finale leaves a taste of both fear and hope. The apocalyptic performance features an ensemble whose parts as survivalists are a little too relatable. It was so cathartic, emotive and enchanting that I was eager for a second round.
Grand Finale played Arts Centre Melbourne as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, October 10-13.
