‘600 Seconds: Moves’ – some of the most diverse dance you’ll see in just under an hour

Western Australian dance ensemble Strut Dance this year partnered with The Blue Room Theatre on a short works program titled 600 Seconds. The first part was 600 Seconds: Makes – a series of 5 x 10-minute spots of theatre (hence the 600 seconds reference) which challenged the thespian norm; the second, which kickstarted this week, is 600 Seconds: Moves – its primary focus being dance and physical movement.

Although I’ve seen a lot of dance productions in my 20-plus years of performance art reviewing, I’ve never quite experienced the variety that a production like this presents.

Each individual performance is as different as the next, some going beyond the art of dance and delving into other areas of performance art: martial arts, spoken word, music production, and so on.

As patrons settle into their seats, a couple of guys are practicing what looks like a cross between ballet and boxing training. As the lights go down, performers Luther Wilson and Nathan Turtur continue their play-fighting which soon morphs into romantic gestures and a pending romance. The performance is one part Greco-Roman wrestling, one part homoeroticism, and all very impressive movement. Put it this way, if boxing was this exciting in the ’80s, I’d have taken it up with my older boxing brother.

Next up is ‘Moving Words’ by Lara Dorling in which the artist blends beautifully spoken word, audio reverb, and a spasmic style of dance that looks like I feel when I’ve taken on too much multitasking. While there is a lot going on in Dorling’s layered production (literally layered when it comes to sound as she delivers impressive live audio editing), the act itself is liberating to watch.

It’s as if Billie Eilish and Björk decided to put on a short show together, with Laurie Anderson twiddling on the special effects panel – and Dorling does it all seemingly effortlessly.

‘Echoes of Expansion’ by Elsa Bignell and Meg Scheffers offer a dance that is more fluid than its predecessor but just as exhilarating to watch. To a soundtrack of natural noise – birds chirping, leaves rustling – the pair utilise one other to make their way around the stage, combining physical virility with sensitive touch.

‘The Mist’ by Jiarui Lin sees an artist taking on not only the brief of ‘movement’ but the adjective of moving. Lin puts in the motions and plenty of emotions in a 10-minute solo work that ought to be the criteria for all performance artists going for audition. His split-second changing gestures and facial expressions make your regular mime artists look tame.

And rounding out these five fine productions is Patrick Gunasekera’s Risk: Pas de deux in which the second player is actually a four-wheeled walker/trolley. Gunasekera puts so much into their performance, it seems as though the trolley begins to take on a life of its own, the pair sharing romantic walks and dramatic tiffs. It’s nice to see lighting and audio incorporated to help add to the dance’s message – limelight nice and bright when a scene is set in a park; vivid pink when passions fly, and meanwhile the music is reaching its Hitchcockian peak.

These five mini productions present a nice mix of the new dance talent Perth has to offer. Here’s hoping we’re seeing fully fledged productions come about by year’s end.

Antonino Tati

600 Seconds: Moves is on at the Blue Room Theatre in Northbridge. Tickets are available at blueroom.org.au.

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