Dance / “On Course”, QL2. Gorman Arts Centre. December 16-17. Reviewed by SAMARA PURNELL.

QL2 has presented its last production for 2023 with “On Course”, a program that gives recent university graduates an opportunity to return to QL2 and choreograph, workshop and dance with each other and current senior dancers.

The program opened with three short films, the first two “We Live This Very Ephemeral Life” and “Warped Reality” were edited into short sequences or flashes.

In the first film, “I wanted you” is repeated as vignettes of a dancer in a studio, and students playing and rehearsing flash past. In the latter film, Mia Canton and Leyla Boz dance in and around a bright orange and yellow structure beside a road in Melbourne. A soundtrack of strings begins to make this meditative to watch. The women are not concerned with the goings on around them and traffic passing by is oblivious to their existence.

The third film, “Run Point” by Magnus Meagher, was set in Commonwealth Park, in a place recognisable to most Canberrans. Meagher is interested in and has studied media so the film itself was as much a focus as the choreography, which was based on parkour and the idea of moving together as a team.

The dancers didn’t execute every sequence with the deftness that often characterises parkour, but the filming, mostly in stark daylight, editing, music, which had a Skrillex vibe, and the movement sequences were rhythmic and striking. The film was fun and felt like watching a video-clip for a quirky band.

The live performance began with Christopher Wade’s “The Space Between”. He drew on his own experience to observe what creates motivation and energy and the workings of an introvert’s mind.

Rolling, wavy movements performed to a ’60s sounding track demonstrated the mental processes and had the dancers alternate from the observed to the observer. The dancers used momentum to move in sweeping movements and stop-start pulls. Liam Berg stood out in this piece about getting comfortable with being an introvert.

In stark and glorious contrast was “Diary of a Teenage 23 Year Old”, Ruby Ballantyne’s personal work about being an overthinker and a talker and living at 1000 miles an hour. It was a solo dance, with Ballantyne in a bright red top and lipstick, acting out her voiceover. It was amusing, engaging and insightful, a piece performed with precision that was as much drama as dance.

Liam Berg introduced the audience to “Therapy” with lashings of Jane Fonda and ’80s exercise videos routines. Berg took the practice of therapeutic movement and breathwork and framed it in aerobics, giving it humour, energy and quirkiness, presenting a version of work that engages the audience rather than the more challenging works of discovery and exploration of body, self and “the process” that are sometimes presented by dancers. Berg and Wade performed this intentionally camp piece together and it didn’t seem a stretch to compare the dancers to Ed Sheeran and Troye Sivan collaborating for a film-clip!

In a flurry of bodies, seemingly swept around by a strong wind, “Held in Flesh” closed the show. Balletic arm positions, spins, flicks, controlled poses and outbursts of limbs depicted the body both reacting to internal processes and external stimuli.

Rory Warne used this opportunity granted him by QL2 to take his first steps into choreography, where he has collaborated with five senior QL2 dancers to perform his work. The music, also titled “Held in Flesh” was beautiful – a soundscape of gulps, soft pops and beats conjured the internal functioning and tuning of a body.

The pieces presented tied-in nicely together. After a two-week period to prepare, collaborate, rehearse and get performance-ready, the choreographers and dancers have presented a lovely program of eight-to-10 minute works, under Ruth Osborne and with Alison Plevey as mentor.

A post-show Q & A revealed the true value to these budding artists who described the opportunity given them by QL2 as invaluable, a rare opportunity, supportive and a reminder of the connection they still have with each other and QL2.