Dance, as I've said several times in the last 24 hours, is the artform I'm least au fait with. I don't speak its language - certainly not to the degree with which I'm fluent in the narrative and vernacular of cinema, theatre and other artforms, at any rate.
That said, on Wednesday night I saw what is without doubt the most engaging, stunning and vivid dance work of the year; the latest production by Melbourne's avant-garde dance company, BalletLab, Brindabella.
I hoped to like it. I didn't expect to find it as fascinating as I did.
In this 70 minute work, choreographer Phillip Adams leaps effortlessly from the camararderie of the gang to the violence of the pack, from humour to sensuality, from the freedom of self-realisation to the trap that is the way others see us. Part homage to queer culture; part reinvention of Beauty and the Beast; and part memorial to a boyfriend Adams lost to AIDS, and whose hand he held as he died: Brindabella is a complex, challenging and sublime work that deserves far more than its all-too brief season at the Malthouse.
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