Graeme Murphy - Gun for Hire.

Acclaimed choreographer Graeme Murphy is relishing the challenge of going commercial.  Just three years after leaving the Sydney Dance Company, which he founded, he’s become a ‘gun for hire’.

He told Neil Litchfield he’s relishing the challenge of 2011, which includes a contemporary dance piece Suite Synergy, followed by the new Australian production of Lloyd Webber musical Love Never Dies and Romeo and Juliet for the Australian Ballet.

“The great joy for me is that there have been projects which I have absolutely grabbed because they’ve been great projects, but projects that were completely different to Sydney Dance Company. They’ve taken me away from contemporary dance, and into opera, film and classical ballet genres.”

Now with new commercial contemporary dance company Mod Dance, Murphy is revisiting two of his most successful works, Synergy with Synergy and Free Radicals.

“This is like coming back to contemporary dance on my terms, without the bureaucracy which comes with government funded companies, with the whole freshness, and an ability to relook at two works that I’d done before, have them redesigned, and re-costumed.”

Suite Synergy is the initiative of a young, vibrant group of Melbourne presenters called Mod Agency.

“They thought that the product, as they saw it, was a commercial product.

“There is no massive board that you’re answerable to. They are sincere, they’re hard-working, they have raised the money – God knows how, in this tough climate, and they’re prepared to set up a completely new model.

“These two percussive works were the most commercial works that Sydney Dance Company ever did. Whenever we presented them; when we did them in New York, and through China and Europe, people said, ‘This is extraordinary. We know it’s contemporary dance but it feels like commercial theatre.’ Being a subsidized dance company, you could never sit it down in a theatre and run them for a period of time, because you always had the next gig, the next project and the next year’s planning to do.

“If you were to put in an application for Government funding, that would be a five year in the making job. This was born in less than a year.

“Suddenly, two works that I thought maybe I would never see again, have joined forces, become one brand new product, and have the chance to actually perform for six months across Australia, employing 18 dancers and four musicians for a six month contract.

“Let’s face it, most of the contemporary dance companies have between six and ten dancers.”

Suite Synergy has grown out of two of Graeme Murphy’s hit collaborations with percussionist Michael Askill. Free Radicals was probably the most performed work that Sydney Dance Company did nationally and internationally.

“I just had to get my head around how you marry two works. Musically it wasn’t very hard, because there was a combination of big solid percussive sound, and really intimate delicate sounds, and melodic sounds. Everyone thinks of percussion as just big banging, but in fact it covers the whole range.

“Then, there was the task of finding dancers. There were some dancers who were no longer employed by Sydney Dance Company, who I adored, and were looking for work, and there’s a whole breed of extraordinary new dancers who have come on the scene.

“I think the phenomenon of So You Think You Can Dance has spawned a whole new generation.”

Murphy’s new dancers include a wide variety of performers, including So You Think You Can Dance contestants and former boy stars of Billy Elliot, who are now men.

“A work like Suite Synergy can embrace all sorts. There’s tap dancing, and there’s dancers being massaged by the musicians, who literally play tunes on their bodies, and there’s a thing called Banged and Tapped - while a tap dancer is dancing, he’s literally covered with instruments. It’s too much fun, and there’s humour there. Sometimes people think contemporary dance is a bit too earnest for them, but I’ve always been from the school of thought that it’s for everyone.”

Murphy spoke about the pleasure of his new ability to work across several genres, away from the time-consuming demands of 30 years at the Sydney Dance Company.

“Sometimes you feel like the creative aspect is secondary. That’s not a good feeling. I mean, I had a joyous time.  Sydney Dance Company was fabulous for me. The adventures we had, the tours to America, the later conquests we had in China, on a personal and a collaborative level, were all beautiful. But underlying all this was a constant jumping through hoops that one has to do to receive funding.”

Murphy clearly relishes the chances to broaden his palate that his departure from the Sydney Dance Company has allowed.

“I love the challenge of doing new things, and new things are offering themselves all the time.

“I’m about to do Love Never Dies, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. This is a brand new venture for Australia, and it’s very exciting. I’ve been through the audition process with Simon Phillips and looking at the depth of talent was fabulous for me. My world has been very narrow in the world of dance, and you open it up to those who can dance, sing and act, and suddenly the palate gets very big.

“I like the fact that it’s a brand new approach, that it’s a fresh start to the existing musical, and I have to say I’m completely seduced by the music and the whole concept.

“The state of musicals in Australia is very healthy for our population. The dancers who came through the door were stunning.”

Rather than being a challenge, Murphy sees the crossover between Contemporary Dance and Musical Theatre choreography as a natural fit.

“I’m a narrative choreographer in many ways. I’ve always loved storytelling as a choreographer; I think it’s my forte. So it seems to me that an involvement in a musical is a fairly comfortable fit for me. Sometimes dance is decorative, and you stop the show and have a dance number. In a musical, I feel that dance should be a part of the process of storytelling. Sometimes I feel the same thing happens in ballet; you know, when something is definitely put in there to wake people up, as opposed to advancing the heroine’s plot action. In dance, even Suite Synergy, I have to say, although there is no storyline, there is definitely a visceral emotional journey that you take, because there’s something about the primal aspect of those drums, once they start, that brings out the worst and best in dancers – brings out the animal.

“I’ve got three beautiful projects this year. Suite Synergy is very close to my heart because it’s a revisiting of works that I feel very loving towards. The adventure of a new musical is thrilling, but then at the end of the year, there’s a great monster called Romeo and Juliet with the Australian Ballet. That is huge, and will have been two years in the pipeline.

“Each one of those works is so different to the next, and I think that’s what keeps my spirits very high. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a grind.”

Suite Synergy opened at the State Theatre, the Arts Centre, Melbourne on March 23 and the Lyric Theatre, Star City on April 6, 2011.

Review

http://www.suitesynergy.com.au/

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