Review: Dust (Dancenorth)

The history of our species is defined by those things that bind us together and those that drive us apart. It's this immutable friction – between our shared humanity and the social divides that fracture it – that is the driving essence of Kyle Page and Amber Haines' Dust. It’s an ambitiously expansive premise that could invite any number of responses, but from this sprawling concept, Page and Haines have hewn a choreography of extraordinary confidence and purpose, superbly performed by the members of Townsville-based company Dancenorth.

The most conspicuous expression of Dust’s isolationist symbolism is a blade-like wall that carves through the centre of the stage. As the work begins, a group on one side of this divide huddles together, juddering pulses rippling through their collective mass. On the other side of the wall, a solitary dancer offers a distant echo of this trembling exchange, seemingly yearning to belong yet unable to overcome an insurmountable force. The audience’s sightlines are deliberately undemocratised; some viewers are able to experience the full, uncompromised effect of this stage picture, while others are limited to just one side of the bisected scene.

Created by design house Liminal Spaces, this wall proves to be a highly resourceful element. Broken down into asymmetrical blocks, it becomes a jagged road; a ramshackle jetty; a metropolitan skyline; or a place of memorial. Yet these transformations occur with such subtle, unhurried ease, their shifting representations are almost impossible to predict. These transitions are also so meticulously woven into the fabric of the production, the integrity of the dance is never undermined by distracting stage business.

The design is otherwise extremely sparing, but the choreography is capable of both subtlety and spectacle without the need for bells and whistles. From a palate of seemingly uncontrolled, improvised gestures – convulsive spasms; robotic jerks; serpentine flexes – come phrases of fierce invention and complexity. Moments of ordered rigour suddenly emerge from this physical chaos, speaking to the degree of lucid, considered technique in orbit around this work’s conceptual core.

But while Dust features a highly mature lexicon of movement, it’s not indiscriminately inventive. There’s a discipline and restraint to the choreography that protects its identity while allowing wild impulses of dramatic energy – surges of anger, compassion, fear, sensuality – to hurtle through the bodies on stage. It’s movement that toys with a taut push-pull, toeing the line between individual freedom and a cohesive status quo. By turns exhilarating, then almost votive in its quiet, minimalistic simplicity, the dancers trace hesitant courses around each other, splitting apart or coalescing, as if caught in the rippling wakes of unnameable emotions. 

Violinist and composer Jessica Moss delivers a musical sound-scape perfectly in-sync with the production's artistic vision. Characterised by similarly subtle, yet mercurial shifts in its emotional tonality, the combination of real-time looping and pumping electronica follows tremulous patterns through dense washes of sound. Much like the movement it accompanies, there is great sophistication in its intention and economy, capable of both totemic, febrile fury and breathless tenderness.

However, it's a subliminal component of this work that is perhaps its most remarkable accomplishment. The political message of Dust – exploring the ongoing injustices committed against those who represent otherness: refugees and immigrants, the homeless, those outliers who are so frequently demonised by dog-whistle rhetoric, in the media and in government – is powerfully present without being overwhelming. This is a work capable of expressive depth without the need for polemic hyperbole, and in an age when our lives are perpetually bombarded by outrage, from both ends of the political spectrum, such measured, thoughtful commentary can speak louder than any angry words.