Kairos

Meryl Tankard draws masterfully on stunning creative collaborations to create our current turbulent world, “collapsing and expanding through a concertina of floods, fire, plaque and war”.  The choreographer calls her vision, Kairos; it’s an ancient Greek word suggesting a random but opportune moment.  And it’s now.

After workshopping with six dancers at the old Arthur Boyd homestead of Bundanon south of Sydney, surrounded by fire ravaged nature and some dark portraits and war images by Sidney Nolan, Tankard merged the dancers’ solo pieces into this splendid one hour dance exploration of an isolated, stranded humanity.

Driving it is composer and pianist Elena Kats-Chenin on the grand.  And the visual magic of Tankard’s partner and long-time collaborator Regis Lansac.  His images and videos of a lush, entangled nature projected on back scrims evokes an astonishing 3D world, beautifully lit by Verity Hampson. From within, dancers in long robes slowly emerge – including the goddess Iris, a messenger between heaven and earth.

Frontstage, amongst concentric circles on the floor, the performers plead and harass each other, later supportive and even loving in the face of catastrophe, but rarely do they all dance together.  Their singular, haunted gestures, eyes wide, bodies contorted, hands wild as though against insects, match Kats-Chernin’s pounding (often solemnly melodic) piano, but this movement is not dancerly.   Indeed, its human specificity moves and frightens us but also makes us yearn, like in a drama, to know more about what’s going on!

Choreographers usually speak without words but are often now creating work urgent with environmental concerns and apocalypse.  Kairos is an outstanding, transporting new example – leaving images imprinted on the brain – from the celebrated Tankard and her team. Her six inventive dancers/choreographers, drawn it seems from across the globe, are Lillian Fearn, Cloe Fournier, Taiga Kita-Leong, Jasmin Luna, Julie Ann Minaai and Thuba Ndibali.  

Martin Portus

Photographer: Regis Lansac