Dance / Co_Lab:24, Australian Dance Party. At Courtyard Theatre until May 1. Reviewed by SAMARA PURNELL.

Australian Dance Week has been launched at CMAG, with a preview of Australian Dance Party’s Co_Lab:24 performed at the Courtyard Theatre. 

A multi-disciplinary improvisation practice that would usually be kept in-studio has been opened up for the public to experience, for only the second time since ADP began the Co_Lab program.

Dancers Alison Plevey, Sara Black and Melanie Lane, with musicians Alex Voorhoeve, Sia Ahmad and visual artist Nicci Haynes, create a unique, immersive experience for the audience to engage in.

Ahmad on startlingly loud electric guitar and Voorhoeve on a modified electric cello begin to create a soundscape that fills the enclosed Courtyard Theatre space. The dancers join in, sometimes dancing solo, at times together. At various points in the performance they come together, to connect, interact and play off each other.

Vocalisations, whispers, notes and breath, recorded live by Ahmad and Black, are looped and reverberated to encompass the space and provide a canvas for the dancers. The dancers in turn create movements that influence the other creatives.

Haynes, positioned at a desk at the edge of the dance space, creates a fascinating visual landscape, which is projected in real time onto the dance floor. Haynes wears gloves and utilizes paper, water, chalk, highlighters, darkness and light to make patterns, colours and visual textures for the dancers to play with. Outlining their bodies with lines or creating swirls and patterns as the dancers spun and swept through the space gave the sequences an animated appearance.

One particularly beautiful moment was when a glass of water being swirled by Haynes created a projection that quivered and vibrated in harmony with the pulsing sounds being created by the musicians.

For the most part the artists followed cohesive, cooperative interactions. When music appeared to indicate “up”, dancers reached up, for example, rather than trying to pull or lead each other in conflicting directions.

A box was introduced and the dancers used this to add to the rhythms being made and the scale of dance vignettes created, before Plevey and Voorhoeve play off each other with a series of taps and beats.

The soundscape ends with Voorhoeve’s cello notes and he eventually slumps over, signifying the conclusion of the performance.

For audiences wanting a performance with specific narrative, form and meaning, this is not the performance. But, for those interested in a peek at how artists in different fields are now so often collaborating and creating work, both expanding their own repertoire and offering a different type of experience for audiences, this improvised, multi-disciplinary interaction of sound, dance and art offers this opportunity, whilst creating a sensory, immersive and unique experience.