Yes Dance

Second Best

As part of the Sydney Fringe I caught YES DANCE at the Dickson St Space, Newtown, a very intimate venue. The audience was on two sides of the ‘square’ and almost on stage themselves .There was just a tiny clear space of beautiful wooden floor, and the brick wall , for this challenging , quirky piece by Rennie McDougall which ‘ explores choreography for free-thinking bodies.’

Choreographer Rennie McDougall is one of the up-and-coming talents of the Melbourne dance scene. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts four years ago he has worked with some of Melbourne’s most prominent contemporary dance companies, including Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc, Luke George and BalletLab. YES DANCE promises the “guilty pleasures” of popular dance, as he and fellow performers Leah Landau and Harrison Hall “surround the audience with movement”.

The three dancers, barefoot and in casual clothes, enter diagonally to blasting, pulsating disco music with Fosse jazz hands and thrusting hips. There is a very showy jazz ‘production number’ sequence , reminiscent of MTV/1970’s big TV numbers. The three exceptional dancers already reveal their sensational quality of movement . Then suddenly – freeze – and the dancers very slowly then begin to look up and eventually resume dancing.

The trio of dancers then appear to seek meaning in the movements, experimenting with one choreographic manipulation after another from what was originally a rather disposable movement framework .
The ‘production number’ choreography is repeated then fractured/changed in various snippets , rearranged and interspersed with short solos and broiling, at times wave-like sculptural choreography .You could also see the Del Amo style influence. What is fascinating is to see how the different bodies interpret the work and also the combined unison work, ‘a fluctuating exchange between the deeply kinetic and the superficiality of the dance’ as McDougall says.

Most of the work is performed in silence, although some recorded music is used (Randy Crawford) which emphasises the abstraction and dissection of the movements,– isolation of the torso and shimmies for example . Each of the trio have some marvelous distinctive short solos as well as being involved in the slithery duets and trios. Some Pilates and martial arts movements are included.

There is a wonderful section where the hands of the performers become like birds or butterflies .In another segment emphasis is placed on sounds the bodies make – the slap of arms, the whisper of feet on the floor, panting groans, rasping breaths which is contrasted with another section using voice and repetition and difficult rhythms of ‘ Come on in ‘ spoken in various ways.

Does abstracting movement create more meaning than it had previously, and how our interpretations and responses change when a pop beat returns, are questions also examined in this work .

A challenging ,thought provoking ‘study’ as McDougall calls it.

YES DANCE  plays at the Dickson St Space Newtown between the 16th and 20th September 2014.

Running time 45 mins (approx) no interval

Performers Harrison Hall, Leah Landau and Rennie McDougall