Supernatural, surprising and intimate: THREE celebrates diversity of modern dance

Posted on 23 May, 2022

It’s no secret that the rise of COVID-19 dealt a devastating hand to the global arts community.

But one of the few silver linings of this performance pause is that many artists took the opportunity to return to their roots—and with live theatre and dance back on the menu, we’re reaping the rewards.

One such artist is Australian-Javanese performer and choreographer Melanie Lane, who returned to Canberra in 2020 after years spent crafting dance performances across Europe, the US and Indonesia, and quickly found a home choreographing works for the likes of QL2 and The Australasian Dance Collective.

It’s the latter who will perform one of Melanie’s newest works, Alterum, as part of THREE, a showcase of contemporary dance at Canberra Theatre Centre across the evenings of 24 and 25 June.

With three performances each night from The Australasian Dance Collective, Alterum will be joined on-stage by Still Life by Brisbane-based choreographer and dance in the Collective, Jack Lister, and Cult, the ground-breaking work by London-based Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter.

“It’s always such a great experience for an audience to have a diversity of [dance] languages and I think this program is particularly diverse—each work has a different message, aesthetic, and language,” says Melanie. “I’m really proud to be sharing the evening with them.”

Melanie says it’s “really exciting” to see Alterum come to her hometown, noting that it’s one of her first pieces to do so—although it certainly won’t be her last. In fact, her first Canberra feature for 2022 will happen a month before THREE when QL2 premieres Melanie’s new work Metal Park as part of their Terra Firma show across 26–28 May, also at Canberra Theatre Centre.

For Melanie, it’s exciting to see how Canberra’s dance community has developed since she was a young dancer.

“The community is really connected, supported and driven and that’s really exciting.”

Melanie says that “like many young dancers” she started in ballet at what was then the National Capital Ballet School where she was taught by Janet Karin, whom she credits with fostering her love of choreography and contemporary dance.

“I think she was a great influence in those early days of my dancing life,” reflects Melanie, who left Canberra for Perth when she was accepted into the acclaimed Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 1996.

But classical ballet may just be the furthest thing from your mind when it comes to Alterum. A futuristic journey undertaken by dancers clad in chromatic bodysuits and sunglasses, Melanie says Alterum was inspired by reading Michael Faber’s acclaimed 2000 science fiction novel Under the Skin.

“I got very interested in the speculative fiction lens and thought it was an exciting territory to explore through dance,” she explains. “Although it’s very abstract and fictional, it’s a lens through which to look at ourselves in a very human way.

“The title alterum means ‘other’ in Latin so it’s a way to look at the human body and push past its limit into a more supernatural world.

“As it’s a short piece, around 25 minutes, it’s an exciting and playful way to look at the body and see how far we could go into an unreal universe.”

Naturally, an unreal universe needs its own soundscape, which comes courtesy of Melanie’s partner, electronic musician Chris Clark.

“We build the music and the dance simultaneously—we rebound off each other.”

When I ask Melanie to distil the essence of Alterum into three words, she laughs and hesitates then says: supernatural, surprising and intimate.

What more could you want from this contemporary dance star’s Canberra homecoming?

Feature image: David Kelly