AK03: Sydney Dance Company's Ellipse at The Civic

By BERNADETTE RAE

The Sydney Dance Company's Ellipse is a slick and sexy machine, plotless and narrative-free. It was inspired and is driven by its music, a selection of Australian composer Matthew Hindson's work.

So it is dance in the abstract, with a kaleidoscope of moods.

The Sydney Dance Company is a veteran company and artistic director Graeme Murphy has had a long and particular vision, gathering up, over the last decade, a very particular group of dancers: athletic and extremely Australian-looking men and tiny girls, permanently moulded in the physical delicacy of pre-adolescence.

With the exception of the willowy Katie Ripley, a relatively new addition to the company - several dancers have been with Murphy for 10 years or so - they look like Russian gymnasts.

So the repertoire is full of flying female bodies, neat as pins and light as feathers, buoyant as yoyos, quicksilver lithe, bouncing off the big boys in breathtaking array.

This spectacle comes to a crescendo inChrissietina's Magic Fantasy with the minute, even in this company, Tracey Carrodus in partnership with the masterly Simon Turner and Josef Brown, and Ripley. It is breathtaking.

The most beautiful duet is in the opening piece, Lament, music for cello and piano, performed by Wakako Asano and Katherine Griffiths, before it becomes a trio with Simon Turner.

Ellipse is dressed by Akira Isogawa, and the filmy, floaty, barely there costumes, are gorgeous, especially in this item when music, movement and colour all conspire to perfection.

There is more Lament later in the programme, which is beautiful too, although those costumes look less romantic and more cluttered on the male bodies en masse.

The tempo changes considerably for Technologic 2, a lively quartet of Irish-ish dance in Speedos, and the fired-up and fiery Westaway and the finale, Speed.

By then the repetitive elements of some of the choreography, the vague sense of New Age in the music and a yearning for some Deeper Meaning in all this gorgeousness, is starting to seep through.

So Ellipse is slick, in the best meaning of the word. And sexy. And lovely to look at, beyond question.

But it doesn't do much for the heart.

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

Auckland Festival website