‘A Quiet Language’ transcends time
Australian Dance Theatre is celebrating 60 years with a work that not only reflects on its own history, but also encourages its audiences to locate themselves within the patterns of the past, present and future.
Australian Dance Theatre’s (ADT) next blockbuster work – A Quiet Language – will, as contemporary dance must, revel in its own aliveness and its ephemeral nature.
But buried amid the actions of the moment, swept along with the energy of the six dancers’ movements on stage, tangled up between their breaths and that of the musician performing live alongside them, there will be the ever-present shadow of something else.
For this work, the past is as much an animating force as the present.
“When we were doing research into the early days of ADT, we came across some collateral which described a work as a ‘happening’,” says ADT artistic director and A Quiet Language choreographer Daniel Riley.
“In the early days of ADT, when the company was beginning, artists of all disciplines were invited into the space for art parties, places for people to try things, experiment. It seemed like such a joyous time. There’s a real generosity to the idea of thinking of the company as this shared space.
“We wanted to capture some of that energy in A Quiet Language.”
Coming in the year of ADT’s 60th anniversary, the work – which will premiere as part of the Adelaide Festival – is a deliberate compression of time. It both examines the company’s past and forecasts its future.
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Key to this has been tracing the parallels between the company’s “bold” beginnings in 1965 under founder Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and its current trajectory.
“It hasn’t been about recreating, replicating, or remounting any of those [early] works,” says ADT artistic associate Brianna Kell.
“But really, I guess digesting the information and going, ‘we are still bold, we are still brave, and we are still like leading with that unapologetic voice to create these works’.”
Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Daniel Riley. Phot: Jonathan VDK
In practical terms, one way A Quiet Language brings the company’s historic DNA to light is by focusing on the “company as shared space” notion that Riley highlights from its past.
In developing A Quiet Language, the artists are practicing a doctrine of “collective care” that Kell says also characterises Riley’s leadership of the company.
It involves a highly collaborative method of making in which the dancers performing on stage – Sebastian Geilings, Zachary Lopez, Karra Nam, Yilin Kong, Patrick O’Luanaigh and Zoe Wozniak – and the wider cast and crew are all intimately involved in creatively shaping the piece.
Kell says this shared creative process makes for a deeper, often more emotionally resonant, artistic outcome.
“The dancers feel like they’re actually understood and… [then they] bring such vulnerability and strength to the room,” she says.
“They bring such power and generosity with themselves, and sometimes it is absolutely so incredibly moving. I am constantly blown away by the dancers’ ability to commit to that storytelling.”
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Much of the collaborative experimentation that has driven the creation of A Quiet Language has also involved musician Adam Page, who has been improvising music to prompt and respond to the dancers in rehearsal, creating an intense feedback loop of energy.
Page will perform live on stage for the work and the energy between him and the dancers represents the collaborative joy that forms one pillar of the piece. But alongside the buoyancy of celebrating the company’s collectivism, A Quiet Language also takes the opportunity to look outwards at the last 60 years.
“There are similar parallels to the where the company began sixty years ago and to now with the referendums, the Voice, and the wars, sadly,” says Kell.
Pictued Zoe Wozniak. Photo: Jonathan VDK
To parse these recurring histories, the company has thematically centered the development of the work around exploring five key ideas of the body, politics, place, voice and people. Implicit in A Quiet Language’s references to the repetitive tendencies of history is a call for audiences to locate themselves within these patterns of past, present, and future.
One idea that Kell says has stuck with her from the work’s creative development is that of listening deeply and considering carefully who is given the chance to speak.
“It’s been absolutely paramount that we listen and we let the First Nations artists and creatives have space to speak to their experience and speak to the ongoing ways in which they are experiencing our country.
“And I hope that everyone has an opportunity to listen and sit and perhaps re-engage with how they communicate.”
To facilitate reflections like these, A Quiet Language will be performed in traverse, with audiences seated either side of a central stage, facing each other. As they watch the dancers and Page perform, they will also be looking at those opposite – a kind of mirror of themselves.
It’s this kind of creative decision – and the willingness to embrace complexity by creating work that is both joyful and challenging – that ties the company’s present and future securely to its rebellious past.
“Just like the early days of ADT, the work will speak to our present moment and celebrate dance’s ability to spark change, to challenge the status quo, to subvert, to celebrate and to move our audience to think and feel differently,” says Riley.
‘A Quiet Language’ is showing 26 Feb – 7 Mar at The Odeon as part of the Adelaide Festival.
The work is accompanied by ‘After Images’ – an exhibition that tracks the company’s 60-year history. ‘After Images’ is showing Sat 8 Feb – Mon 24 Mar at the Festival Theatre Galleries.