Aftermath | Australasian Dance Collective

Aftermath is a contemporary dance performance to an absolutely riveting electronic set. Honestly, watching that kind of music performed whilst having to sit still in a theatre chair is a practice in self-flagellation. High-octane indeed, the exertion of these young people was extraordinary, and endless.

Are they human? Are they, like a scene from a sci-fi movie, merely human-esque, remembering the pathways of human-ness, but never quite able to find and release it. We move in and out of underground places, the bare bones of the Powerhouse walls perfectly encapsulating the feeling of trapped inertia.

Image + cover image: David Kelly

A wild turbulent storytelling took place in my head whilst watching. They asked if I can remember, yet? And this is what was recalled. A mess of running in and out of nightclubs in all state of distorted mindspace. A thrumming beat that never ends and could in fact be my own heart, but I can’t tell because the walls are vibrating with bass and sweat in my eyes has clouded my vision. A thousand years spent below ground with a bodily memory of sunshine yet no mortal memory of having experienced it. A hundred sci-fi pulp fiction novels, glimpses and snippets of hollow eyes and craving for connection in a world where there is nothing left, no technology, no fields, no real touch. The anger that comes right after the ship has sailed and you know you will never leave the island. The finality of the door clanging shut, a door with a lock that has no key.

My favourite scene was the one where the group gathered, entranced by something seen in the light, eager yet afraid, willing to throw their comrades into the fire. That scene and the resultant wide-ranging explosion of movement is what remains in my memory the most clearly.

There was a beautiful frenzy of bodies that roiled together, in a cacophony of different needs; needing to be in the group; needing to be held, floating above; throwing their companions to the wolves; pulling up from the ground and abandoning themselves into the fray once again. Really beautiful use of lifts, which are often incorporated awkwardly; these were fluid and embodied.

Image: David Kelly

I wonder about dance and its obsession with youth, with these young people that have only experienced only so much of the quota of human existence. There are experiences that are only learned in the fullness of time, when the world has filled your cup and broken your back and stolen everything joyful and taught you the secrets of waiting for an eternity and then given it all away again. Increasingly as I get older I am looking for performers to speak to this part of the self, to respond to this need in my self to see my own experiences translated onto the stage. To paraphrase someone who has been lost to my memory, there is something the older dancer has that the younger does not, an ability to tell stories with true empathetic response that youth simply cannot translate. Which is why we must dance as we grey, for what did you have to dance about back then anyway? It takes a rare talent to overcome the lack of personal experience and translate it perfectly into a physical language that those that have lived it will recognise as truth-telling. I am sitting here trying to decide if I think I got what I was looking for. Was I represented, triggered, or merely entertained? Was I seen?

Because what is the purpose of dance, if not to tell us stories, to help us translate our own experiences, to share with us those experiences that we will never hold, never witness in the flesh?

This is a long-winded way of saying that every time I see a dance performance, I am asking myself are they making this for me, or are they making this for them. Or are they doing that which is truly rare and requires more than skill, it requires talent, and somehow straddling both.

Aftermath was a beautiful balance of storytelling combined with sufficient space for the viewer to layer their own threads into the fabric. Warp and weft, we followed their path not once, but twice, and as the call to action stated, we were asked to remember.

Josephine Weise was absolutely electric, drawing my eye time and again. Each of the dancers performed commendably, yet she seemed to fill her body to end of each finger-tip for the entirety of the event.

In the duo between Jack Lister & Jake McLarnon there was a quality of bewitching presence. Not that they were absent from the stage previously, but a kind of meta-presence filled them, their hands, fingertips, finally moving with glowing purpose to the very edges of the skin. Something extra added that was missing before.  Was it love? Was it finally a lived experience filling their bodies? Was it the chance to take the stage for their own for just a few moments? Whatever it was, I felt the shift, as they moved wholly into the moment.

Image: David Kelly

This show didn’t encompass the whole spectrum of human experience, to be sure. But it pushed hard up against the concepts it did want to thresh out, and it did it with full red-hot commitment. These bodies are fit beyond endurance. There is nothing spare. It was extraordinary to witness.

I am always satisfied by watching a performer go to the end of their endurance and this show certainly required it. It felt almost illicit watching the ensemble push themselves this far past ordinary durability. In the end I can say yes, it worked, it was a hefty morsel to chew on, and I am chewing still. It was good enough that it sent me down a spiral of thoughts into the purpose of dance, the wherefore and why and how. It pressed against my mind, and kept me in a state of tension for the entirety. My head full of wild beats, watching the movements inside my mindseye, waiting for the heart to still and the breath to slow and soon all that will be left is a motif repeated until, yes that too shall fade.