Macro

The opening event of the Adelaide Festival of the Arts is always a grand entrance to the festival itself, and whilst on a smaller scale thanks to Covid restrictions, Macro lived up to expectations with its local, national, and international performers combining acrobatics, dance and incredible confections of music and voice.

Adelaide’s home-grown and world-renowned Gravity and Other Myths have consistently bounced the stage alive with their brand of larrikin daring, their acrobatics inducing gasps at Fringe and Festival venues for many years. Last year’s show The Pulse is the source of much of this year’s opening night performance, still performing with the amazing voices of the mass choir Aurora but enhanced considerably through the addition of First Nations dance group Djuki Mala and a trio of Scottish folk artists. The event was co-commissioned with the Edinburgh International Festival, so will travel to the northern hemisphere later this year.

The event opened with the traditional smoking ceremony, and it was an incredible sight to witness every dancer, singer and performer walk (and jump, and roll) through the aisles to be individually cleansed with the smoke. Then as the choir taught us to count, the acrobats reflected the number by how many people tall they walked around the stage. ‘One, One-Two-One, One-Two-Three-Two-One’ and there were several towers three people high, walking in lines, just missing more towers walking perpendicular to them. We went higher too.

There were individual feats of balance and precision that live up to the company’s name, but there was no one star: the troupe relied on one another, and the camaraderie was clear – after every throw and twist and controlled fall, there were shared smiles, reassuring hands on shoulders, and thankful pats on the back. The acrobatic ensemble has a tradition of casual conversation through the performance, and this added to the informality that belies the discipline and precision these young people have to achieve such feats.

The inclusion of Djuki Mala was genius – their brand of dance and movement very different to that of the larger group, and they integrated their styles well, though it would have been better to see more of the First Nations influence. The Celtic trio of Aidan O’Rourke on fiddle, Kathleen MacInnes’s voice and Bridghe Chaimbeul on pipes, added to the performance gradually, culminating in a large and loud finale of acrobatics, dance, vocals, and music – the combination of Scottish pipes and Arnhem Land yidaki was a haunting highlight.

The visual spectacle was lifted higher with Geoff Cobham’s lighting design, though the low light intimacy and cut-to-black moments worked better in a theatre than in an open-air environment. There was much noise in the audience about the difficulties in seeing the performance from further back – there were 7,000 of us sitting on chairs on a very flat lawn – and very dark video screens didn’t help that. For a major visual event such as this, it’s vital that we can see what’s happening from all points of the viewing area.

Macro is magnificent. It's certainly a show to launch another year of great Festival acts and events: ending with an impressive firework display, we’re feeling proud of our fellow Adelaideans, our fellow Australians, who will travel to the other side of the world in a few months to show Edinburgh what they’re all about.  

Mark Wickett

Photographer: Andrew Beveridge

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