Light and Shade
11 April - 24 April 2004
Earl Arts Centre Launceston
29 April - 1 May 2004
Hobart College Performing Arts Centre Hobart
06 May - 09 May 2004
Gasworks Throatier Melbourne
Choreography by
Chrissie Parrott: Swimming the Luna Sea
Tanja Liedtke: Enter Twilight
Composers: Jonathan Mustard and DJ Tr!p
Lighting Design: Theresa O'Connor
Costume Design: Joanna Anglesey and Odette Arrieta-Shadbolt
Graphic Design: Kieran Bradley
Rehearsal Director: Natasha Middleton
Dancers: Craig Bary, Trisha Dunn, Lisa Griffiths, Ryan Lowe, Malcolm McMillan and Tania Tabacchi.
"Liedtke's strengths include inventiveness and visual surprise. This dance is stylish, pert, cheeky and flirtatious."
Sue Moss, The Dance Insider, April
"Parrott elicits wonderful intensity from the performers. Rolling actions that expand and contract, advance and retreat, create a sense of tidal ebb and flow."
Hilary Crampton, The Age, May 10
"The quality of this program - solid choreography and a strong team of interesting dancers, backed by imaginative productions designers who achieve a lot with the simplest of elements - makes me wish we in Melbourne saw this company more often."
Rose Mulready, Dance Australia, August/September 2004
Light and Shade examines the notions of light and dark through works by choreographers Chrissie Parrott and Tanja Liedtke. Parrott is one of the most outstanding visionary choreographers Australia has produced, while Tanja Liedtke is an exciting, young and gifted emerging choreographer.
Chrissie Parrott's work, Swimming the Luna Sea, is in two sections. The first - Dark, is bleak, predatory and animal like. The dance is a life and death struggle. Dancers fluctuate between the need for support and a need to compete, between angular, resistant movements to fluid and hypnotic passages. Jonathan Mustard's sinister sound score paints a stark and alien landscape further enhanced by Odette Arietta-Shadbolt's apocalyptic costumes.
By contrast, the second section Light offers images of the spiritual and serene. Dominated by a moon-drenched, figure draped in a silver gown the dancers, under the influence of the moon, take on different personas. Different beings enter to pay homage to the figure of light making the most of Joanna Anglesey's poetic and imaginative costumes. This section reflects innocence and order yet has an underlying tone of malice and eccentricity.
The evening concludes with Tanja Liedtke's Enter Twilight that measures the constitution of the light and the dark, the virtuous and the evil. It uses a deft and detailed physical vocabulary to explore the paradox that exists within life's rituals. Composer DJ Tr!p's lo-fi electronic sound score adds a youthful and playful element.
To further illuminate the varying constituents of light and shade, seduction and corruption are the imaginative production elements including Theresa O'Connors subtle lighting.
Education/Schools Suitability: Suitable for ages 13 and above
Other activities on offer: Workshops with local schools, both education and private as well as interested community groups.
Duration: 80 minutes with interval
Availability: 2006
Touring party: 6 dancers, 3 crew (10)
Versatility: 4 shows weekly with 2 school matinees, or 5 full performances. Full or split week buys
Bump-In Lighting: 2 crew, 1 day
Bump-In sound: 1 at 4 hours, no bump out
Bump-Out Lighting: 1 at 4 hours
Tech specifications: stage 10m x 8m, sprung floor, tarquet
