Performance: The Perfect Lie

Freemans Bay Community Centre

Review: Bernadette Rae

Choreographer Sean Curham has long conducted an artistic argument against the artifice of theatre - and dance in particular.

His previous works have come shrieking and yapping from his busy head.

But The Perfect Lie is different.

The set offers the first clue.

A giant mobile of hearts hangs from the lofty ceiling, and the walls of the venue are decked in shiny blue, like a river.

And the capacious stage, where the audience also sits, is transformed by huge, fluffy bales of cottonwool.

We all feel like angels in a picture book, in a cloudscape heaven.

The dancers have to clear the stage in the opening movement so they can move, but the soft, quiet, cocooned feeling remains.

And it is taken up and amplified, explored and adored, challenged and poked at, reframed and refolded in the following hour of pure and beautifully crafted dance

The music by Charlotte 90 is an eclectic blend of electronic wizardry and snatches of country and western, hackneyed old classics, barking dogs, and what sounds like amplified stomach sounds.

And the largely vacant venue stretches cold and dark all around. So the creation and the holding of that sense of softness, vulnerability and emotional exploration is a measure of the strength of Curham's new vision and the response of the dancers' bodies.

Curham, as dancer, impresses anew with his technique and internal body wisdom, perhaps so obvious this time because of the proximity of dancers and audience.

Each movement is visible from its beginning point, in the body's core, moving outward to its logical and finely balanced conclusion, frequently embellished with a little curlicue.

Olivia Bjorklund, Elizabeth Kirk, Guy Ryan and Megan Smith all pick up perfectly on the process.

Tessa Mitchell also makes an appearance as a statuesque angel, magnificently cloaked in cottonwool. (Costume design is by Liz Thompson and Alice.)

Curham has a reputation as the ultimate dancers' dancer, intent on the intellectual content and what he has to say.

In this Perfect Lie he practises a more subtle seduction of his audience - through the heart, with a lot less fizz and splutter and a lot more passion and power.