Short crust pastry, crème pâtissière, caramelised pears. Based on a Damien Pignolet recipe.

Baked Ocean Trout with Preserved Lemon

You’ll be making two things here: a stuffing for the fish cavity and a dressing for the final result. The two complement each other: the stuffing infusing the fish in the cooking, the dressing allowing the final dish to have a freshness of flavour.

Serves 6

1.2kg whole ocean trout, gutted and well-cleaned
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Stuffing
1 preserved lemon, rinsed and rind only, thinly sliced
stalks from half a bunch of dill, chopped
half a red onion, thinly sliced
juice of half a lemon
1 orange, peeled, diced
a splash of white wine (optional)

Dressing
half a red onion, very finely diced
1 preserved lemon, rinsed and rind only, finely diced
fronds from half a bunch of dill, chopped finely
juice of half a lemon

Preheat oven to 220°C (conventional). In a medium-sized bowl, mix all the stuffing ingredients except for the wine and season with pepper. Place the fish on a lightly oiled aluminium foil sheet large enough to wrap it up in. Salt the skin lightly. Pack the stuffing into the gut cavity of the fish. Splash white wine over the fish, wrap it in the foil (so that no steam or liquid will escape in the oven), place it on a baking tray and put in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the dressing by first quickly blanching the onion in some boiling water to mute its taste. Then mix with the rest of the ingredients and stir through a few tablespoons of olive oil until you have a balanced dressing.

Once the fish is baked, use a knife to cut fillets and a spatula to ease the flesh away from the bones. Serve skin side-down with the dressing on top. Goes excellently well with roast potatoes, sour cream and asparagus.

Chicken Thighs with Yoghurt and Preserved Lemon

Serves 2

2 free range chicken thigh fillets, skin on

Marinade
half a preserved lemon, rinsed and rind only, finely diced
2 heaped tbsp yoghurt
2 tsp sumac
juice of half a lemon
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt

To serve
half a preserved lemon, rinsed and rind only, finely diced
4 tbsp coriander, finely chopped

Clean the chicken thighs and cut away or cut through tendons and bone. Score the skin in a few places. Mix the marinade ingredients, using the salt to help crush the garlic. Pour the marinade over the chicken and rub it in well. Place in the fridge overnight or for a few hours.

Heat a frying pan or barbecue (I used a cast iron frying pan lightly greased with rendered chicken fat). Depending on the size of your pan, fry one or both thighs skin down first until the skin is well-browned. Turn and fry the other side for a couple of minutes until the chicken is only just cooked through. Remove the chicken from the hot pan, sprinkle with coriander and preserved lemon and cover with foil for the meat to rest and the coriander to slightly cook. Serve with fresh bread and a green salad.

The Easy Menu
Oysters with chorizo, tomato and pomegranate molasses dressing (variation on Greg Malouf recipe)
Scallops with crispy jamon, parsley, breadcrumbs and butter (variation on Tessa Kiros recipe)
Simple Country Terrine of chicken, pork and spinach (Damien Pignolet)
Jerusalem Artichoke soup with Mushroom Pouch (Drakamöllans)
Cypriot Lamb with Potatoes, Tomato and Cumin (Tessa Kiros)
Pheasant Bestilla (variation on a Tess Mallos recipe)
Sherry Vinegar Mushrooms (Frank Camorra)
Grilled Polenta with Parmesan (traditional)
Caramelised Orange, Witlof and Asparagus Salad (Maggie Beer)
Campari and Grapefruit Granita (variation on River Cafe recipe)
Baklava (family recipe)

Antony Hamilton’s previous full-length works have been unified by a predilection for the adolescent or naïve. In the excellent Blazeblue Oneline, it was the playful mark making of graffiti mixed with cardboard box Transformers. In I Like This, Hamilton, together with Byron Perry, ended a piece about dance creation with a beautiful image of themselves as prelapsarian boys under a doona—fascinated by the magic of light, the possibility of imagination. In Drift, the theme continues with what feels like a pastiche of Heavy Metal comic book tropes.

On the other hand, the clearest point of difference between Drift and Hamilton’s earlier work is that this one eschews the theatre and takes place under a highway. Whether it is the epic scale of Peter Brook’s Mahabharata in a disused quarry, or the intimate celebration of the Flinders St – Elizabeth St intersection by The League of Resonance, site-based works call on their environs and their architecture for framing, for meaning, for reflection. Hence, it seems utterly appropriate that a work set underneath a highway should also be a drive-in show, where we park side-by-side and tune in to the soundtrack’s frequency. In fact, there is a giddy thrill in being given a map and a radio frequency instead of a ticket.

And so, in the gravel and dust beneath the CityLink overpass, down past the Xanadu tent, beside the film studios, in the shadow of the crippled remains of the Southern Star Observation Wheel, across Railway Canal from the city of shipping containers, in front of a row of cars, Antony Hamilton and friends create a post-apocalyptic vision. In that sense, this is a work that responds to its space. The Docklands, and the Wheel in particular, are the perfect location for an examination of the end of history, the folly of civilisation and the browbeaten individual.

Drift has already begun when we arrive. Three dancers are crouching and fretting their way across the ground in single file. They are led by a man in a dust-coloured hoodie who is shadowed at every step and bounce by a pair of ninjas. Yes, they are almost certainly ninjas. A soundtrack of noise, hum and beeps on our radio begins to divulge string instruments, percussion, an incoherent voice or scream. Above us, the tops of concrete pillars flicker with an enigmatic light.

We are watching from some distance, through the inherent frame of a windscreen with the necessary intermediary of glass at a landscape-cum-set that is vast in its reach and its scale. Yet, the dance itself is small and precise, with the physical strobe of jerking motions that Hamilton has incorporated so frequently in his work. Therein lies a problem. There is already a detachment in sitting behind glass, there is a detachment in being in the familiar space of one’s car and there is a distance between audience and the barely-lit dancers. One senses that Hamilton wants to play with this detachment in the sense of its consequent voyeurism—that we have stumbled upon a strange world in a place we have no call to visit normally—but that feels like a conceptual cul-de-sac given that there is no follow-through either on the notion of gaze, or on our presence. Instead, these distancing factors compound on each other to obscure and detract from the choreography. Or rather, the choreography does not fully meet the demands of the location. In this sense, Drift does not respond to its space but merely uses it as a backdrop.

Nevertheless, there are glimpses of what could have been. After the ninjas have left, a woman emerges in nothing more than boots, undies and bejewelled bracelets swinging a large tree branch in desperate circles. The image is strikingly strange and drew some confused looks from a group of young men who happened to wander past, but the image that stands out is when the woman, trying to plant the lifeless branch in the barren ground, holds onto its bulk to stop herself from falling. A spotlight falls on her and the wind blows her hair dramatically to one side. The image of nakedness, lifelessness and futility is framed perfectly by the massive concrete pillars and suddenly the work responds to its epic setting with an image of epic decay.

It finishes with a disappearing act. The topless woman, the ninjas and their leading man have clashed but eventually come to terms and, together, hugging the contours of concrete, they escape from view and we are ushered to start our engines and depart. As we drive off, talk turns to deserts and princesses, shamans and evil warlords, Conan the Barbarian and the seventies. The adolescent pop culture of the drive-in lives on.

This article originally appeared online in RealTime’s Dance Massive coverage, 2011, and is reproduced with permission. http://realtimearts.net/feature/Dance_Massive_2011/10260

In the performing arts, memory can be short. Fashions are forgotten, missteps are glossed over, wheels are reinvented. It is the blessing and curse of producing ephemera. So, when a choreographer upsets the usual cycle of memory lapse by returning to an old work, what is the result? How does an audience primed for immediacy respond to archival distance? What do we see and what do we miss?

Amplification is the work that launched BalletLab and Phillip Adams. Its premiere dates back to the far reaches of 1999. The same year, sanctions against Libya were dropped, something called Napster started and The Matrix opened. So, in some respects, Amplification is ancient history. Yet, here it is again, resurrected.

It is impossible to watch Amplification with eyes a decade younger—to see it now is to see it with the knowledge of what has come since. The problems this gives rise to are clear: the groundbreaking may now seem derivative, the accessible may now seem obscure and the noteworthy may now disappear into a fog of familiarity. However, the rewards are nevertheless there. Amplification holds its own if only because, while some of the style might seem dated, the expressive language remains distinct. Adams’ direction and choreography, in its metaphorical leaps and snowballing dramaturgy is unlike anything else at Dance Massive so far.

It is possible to draw a worthwhile comparison here with German choreographer Sasha Waltz. Premiering only a few months later than Amplification, Waltz’s seminal Körper (seen recently at the 2009 Melbourne International Arts Festival, RT94) has informed not only a decade of contemporary dance but also marked a fundamental moment of artistic expression for Waltz herself. In the subsequent years, Waltz has produced two other works—S and noBody—in response to Körper, making a trilogy of sorts that reflects her development as an artist as much as it does the development of the themes. Similarly, just over a year ago, Adams produced a response to Amplification called Miracle (RT 93). And this year he produced a third instalment, Above.

The most enticing conclusion to be drawn from this is that Amplification is an incomplete work. One that provokes questions rather than providing answers; one that leaves you wanting more; one that Adams has not finished exploring. This also suggests an excellent reason for a remount—for the audience to revisit a work with knowledge of its progeny.

Indeed, as someone who came to Miracle before Amplification, it is only possible to view the older work refracted through the lens of the newer. On the one hand, the distillation and evolution of Adams’ choreography in Miracle becomes evident—for instance, his increased trust in the dancers as embodiments rather than functionaries of his expression. On the other hand, cross-referenced understandings can be reached—for example, the common motif of the saffron cloth makes an overlong ritualistic swaddling of a corpse in Amplification ring with the memory of Miracle’s extraordinary final image of levitation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a choreographer, the locus for Adams’ artistic interest tends to be the body itself. But rather than the encyclopaedic vein of Waltz’s investigation in Körper, Adams is particularly focused on the extremities that the body can conquer, endure or suffer, which leads inevitably to the final extremity—mortality (like live performance, the body too is ephemeral).

In Miracle, the body was a site for internal hysteria, a hindrance to be denied, a vessel to be exited. In Amplification, the violence enacted on the body comes from without. The partnering work is fast and violent, bodies flung with disregard, Lynton Carr’s soundtrack an oppressive ceiling edging downwards. The space is never fully devoid of menace—the silhouetted torture scene is reminiscent of the disturbingly sterile violence of Romeo Castellucci’s Tragedia Endogonidia: BR.#04 Brussels (RT 76), yet there are moments that almost break into the absurd—threatening toy cars roll towards the dancers, one scene mimics the tropes of horror films, another alludes to the symphorophilia of J.G. Ballard’s Crash.

In the end, the clearest point of contrast between Miracle and Amplification comes not in their exploration of the living body but in their vision of the afterlife. Miracle ended with a transcendent sleight of hand, a weightlessly impossible vision of the body in harmony with space. In Amplification, the body retains its mass. The afterlife here is one grounded in the body’s inescapability and so, one by one, the naked bodies of the dancers form a soft eternal landscape.

This article originally appeared in print in RealTime issue #102 April-May 2011 pg. 10, and is reproduced with permission.

Branch Nebula’s Sweat is concerned with turning our attention to the invisible members of society—the ones who pull back our chairs, sweep up our dead skin, wipe away our skidmarks and collect our cafeteria trays. Coincidentally, Chunky Move’s Connected touches on similar ground with its dip into the world of security guards, but Sweat tackles the brief far more directly and provocatively.

Nevertheless, it starts by turning our attention to our own behaviour. On entering the well-lit vastness of the North Melbourne Town Hall, there is nothing to look at but ourselves as we mingle and coalesce in atolls of strangers and acquaintances. It is the foyer writ large, a continuation of the antespace and, yet, Sweat has actually begun. From the gathering comes the sound of a welcome. A young woman, dressed in black with a tray and an apron, steps forward to suggest that we really could have made a better entrée—too noisy, too slow and now we are running late. But punctuality is less important than quality so we are asked to leave and re-enter properly. It is a disempowering experience, like any scolding, which is followed on our second entrance by a pronouncement of the social contract we are entering into. We are expected to stand and move as instructed, to do so autonomously when required, to empathise with the performers, to view them objectively on occasion, to clap them at the end until we are told we can stop clapping and to be upbeat about the show afterwards, indeed, to focus on three central messages:

1. that we saw ordinary people doing extraordinary things
2. that the piece challenged accepted forms but always remained accessible
3. that it is a work of great importance to the future of Australia

The sheer tongue-in-cheek gall and cliché of these pronouncements produces knowing titters in the audience and they are delivered with the host-like air of a waiter explaining the evening’s specials, but the tone shifts markedly as our host walks from one audience member to another and asks them first to dress her in the accessories of a cleaner and then to remove her other clothes. At last, semi-naked in rubber gloves and hairnet, she kindly asks a man to force her to the ground. He complies. The shoe of disempowerment is now firmly on the other foot and we have all been implicated.

This simple point of departure is reminiscent of the recent work of performance artists like Georgie Read, who play a consciously mercurial game of push-pull with the audience’s affection. Throughout Sweat, the performers invite our attention and the visibility it affords with flirtatious glances, sweetness and displays of skill. But they can just as quickly disappear into the resentful distance, punish us or deride our presence. This dynamic with the audience enacts the same power hierarchies that are being represented in front of us, where the performers are ordered to clean the floor with their hair, threatened with violence and abused in Spanish in the course of a few minutes.

The piece is constantly shifting in its use of space, using an ingenious collection of mobile light sources to carve out discrete landscapes. And the audience, as instructed, moves about to stay in contact with what is happening, but the reason for the movement itself is not always clear. As an aesthetic policy it is interesting—forcing us to engage with different angles, different architectures, rejigging our perspective. On the other hand, the meaning-making of it is sometimes less evident or necessary. When we are asked to choose a corner to stand in and, thereby, choose a performer to favour, the act of choosing is a potentially loaded act. What are our criteria? Why do we choose a man and not a woman? Why do we look around to see what we are missing? Yet, the subsequent scene feels redundant in its reformulation of previous content and the movement of the performers from corner to corner negates the weight of our choice and elides the kind of interrogation it could provoke.

However, this is a quibble with one short moment in the middle of Sweat and, towards the end, in its final set piece it regains most of the traction it had to begin with. A group of audience members are invited to sit a table, where the performers, dressed as sweatshop workers, politely serve them wine, spaghetti, tomato soup, peas, pineapple, frankfurters—the kicker being that these items are ladled very carefully into completely inappropriate places. The end result is part Grand Bouffe, part Abstract Expressionism. The smiling ceremonial quality of the rebellion is so disarming and so cleverly worked in with our own understandings of theatre etiquette that the audience victims are left laughing rather than humiliated. The humour relies also on our empathy with the performers who, in becoming so clearly and endearingly visible, make mockery of the established codes of service and their concordant entitlements and disenfranchisements. The performers leave the space with gusto, with an animalistic exuberance. At last, they have been seen.

This article originally appeared online in RealTime’s Dance Massive coverage, 2011, and is reproduced with permission.
http://www.realtimearts.net/feature/Dance_Massive_2011/10244

Chunky Move’s recent work has been characterised by dancers surrounded by the digital. In Mortal Engine and GLOW, Gideon Obarzanek paired the lyricism and vulnerability of the human form to the spectral bling of interactive video graphics. Connected is a lo-fi third chapter. Where the earlier pieces extrapolated on the human form with projected pixels and lasers, Connected does so with strings and wood in the form of a giant Reuben Margolin kinetic sculpture.

Entering the space, the first thing we experience is the dominating presence of this sculpture, resembling an incomplete loom of dangling warp. Two dancers soon enter and, as one tumbles across the floor to the fuzzy glitches and scratches of Oren Ambarchi’s score, the other begins carefully completing the sculpture, clicking magnetised shards of paper to connect the suspended threads into a grid of diamonds. The tumbling dancer soon becomes two, then three, then four, rolling and undulating across the floor but the deployment of numbers cannot conceal the niggling sense that we are being merely diverted while the main course is prepared.

When the paper grid is completed, the sculpture becomes a latent contraption of elegant beauty. And when the dancers’ bodies are then hooked up to the other ends of the threads, the image is made all the more wondrous. Like a diagram of light rays, the strings emerge from the human subjects, refract through a wooden lattice, bounce across the ceiling and drop down into the reflected image of the grid. In that moment, the connection of the human to the mechanical becomes both abstracted and essentialised.

The physical connection itself is not inherently revealing or even interesting. When a person rides a bicycle, they are connected to a mechanical contraption of exceptional elegance and their vertical force translated into horizontal displacement, but this relationship reveals nothing more than the strength of their quadriceps. The bicycle does not express. On the other hand, Margolin’s sculpture, in the frisson between its mathematical rigidity and kinetic fluidity creates the potential for a mechanical poetry. As the dancers shift their bodies forward and back, their movement is translated into the undulation and contortion of the grid. It becomes an infinitely variable abstract canvas for our associations—a bird’s wings, an open ocean, an enveloping cloak.

As such, the sculpture augments the expressive potential of the dancers by extending the reach of their neurons into new fibres (one imagines the ineluctable fun the dancers must have had in rehearsal, exploring the potential for expression and variation, like babies still conquering gross motor skills). When the sculpture is attached to an intimate duet between a man and a woman, the reflected shudders and waving of the grid seem to describe an elusive mathematical representation of love. When the duet evolves into sexual thrusting from the man, the grid responds with some unimpressed crinkling—a neat bathetic joke.

The grid as a reflection of the human form also makes manifest the very scientific thought that created it. It is an expression of the rational mind, a reminder that what we invent is inevitably in our own image, no matter how apparently disembodied. The programming of Connected in parallel with Narelle Benjamin’s In Glass, brings this aspect into clearer focus. Where In Glass treats reflection as a shady psychological force, Connected celebrates the altogether different shadiness of the scientific and mathematic by making it symbiotic with the corporeal.

However, just as this celebration begins, it grinds to a halt. The eponymous connectedness is dispelled when its potential is only beginning to be realised and, instead, the sculpture is unplugged from its human drivers and plugged into a wall socket. As an automaton it becomes even more mathematical and pure, losing none of its beauty, but the dancers become irrelevant (cast your mind to the poetic force of Stifters Dinge). To his credit, Obarzanek acknowledges this irrelevance with a surprising shift into semi-verbatim theatre that transports us very literally into the inner life of art museum security guards. There is perhaps a vein of social critique here, or for that matter an opportunity to emphasise the intricate beauty of the first half with the banality of this episode, but it feels instead that the promise of the first half is left underutilised and that Obarzanek is dancing around rather than with the concepts he provokes.

This article originally appeared RealTime’s Dance Massive coverage, 2011, and is reproduced with permission.
http://www.realtimearts.net/feature/Dance_Massive_2011/10237