[:en]BFI – SIDNEY DANCE COMPANY 04.04.2018. Sava Centar

Ticket prices: 1700, 1900 and 2300 dinars
Sydney Company Game | Sydney

Sydney Dance Company
Sydney, Australia

Gnu, Gabriel Nenquiel
Lux Tenebris, Rafael Bonachela
Full moon, Cheng Cung Lung
Sydney Company Game
Sydney, Australia

Gnu / Wildebeestsip
choreography / choreography: Gabrielle Nankivell
costumes / costumes: Fiona Holley
light design: Matthew Marshall
composition and sound design: Luke Smiles / motion laboratories

duration / duration: 25 ‘
Premiere / Premiere: Carriageworks, 2014

”Wildebeest” is a high-energy tour de force of the dancers physicality. With the head of an ox, the hindquarters of an antelope and the mane and tail of a horse, the wildebeest as image morphs easily between living animal and fanciful creature. Storms and predators gather as instinct stirs the herd and migration whirrs into action like an ancient machine. Wildebeest is an assemblage of the dancer’s fascination for physicality – their power as individuals and strength en masse – their wildebeests within.

Gabrielle Nankivell is an Australian director and performer with formative ties to Europe. Informed by a somewhat nomadic existence, her work is concerned with notions of impermanence. Derived primarily from writing and improvisation, her hybrid choreographic practice invokes imagination, creature and sense memory while supporting perception as a creative and performative condition. She has been awarded numerius choreographic residencies, and created works in Armenia, Belgium, Portugal, Singapore and Slovenia. She also provides choreography and movement consultancy across various stage and film productions. In Europe, she was performing for Belgian artists Alexander Baervoets and Ultima Vez/Wim Vandekeybus and collaborating with Jurij Konjar (Slovenia), Raul Maia (Portugal) and Thomas Steyaert (Belgium). She has also lived and worked in Germany and Denmark. Since re-connecting with Australia through her own projects she has worked with Australian Dance Theatre, Animal Farm Collective, Chunky Move, Gavin Webber, Grayson Millwood, KAGE and Torque Show… Nankivell holds a Bachelor of Dance and a Master of Arts in Writing. Her “Wildebeest“ choreographed for Sydney Dance Company, was named in the 2014 Dance Australia Critics Survey for being Best New Work.

Nankivell, made the undisputed hit of the night!

Light of Darkness / Lux Tenebris
choreography / choreography: Rafael Bonachela
music / music: Nick Wales
costumes / costumes: Aleisa Jelbart
design of lights and scenes: Benjamin Tanks
music arrangement / music mix: Bob Scott
sound design / sound design: Ilia Bezroukov, David Trump
electric violin / electric violin: Veronique Serret
electric cello / electric cello: Kate Moore
double bass / double bass: Maxime Bibeau
Additional percussion: Laurence Pike

duration / duration: 36 ‘
Premiere / Premiere: Roslyn Packer Theater Walsh Bay, 2016

Light in Darkness. This work started and was driven by how the music should sound. I worked with Nick Wales as he composed – I fed into that process to capture an emotional sense… For me, there was a driving force about how light and darkness affects us all, our moods, our memories of specific periods in our lives… The physical sense of light and darkness, overlaid with the emotional connections to those contrasting worlds… The dancers have always been my faithful collaborators. Before any movement came into play, I invited the dancers to creatively respond to the score in whatever way they wanted to. Some responded with drawing, some with poetry, some with prose. These initial responses all became part of the process and creation. The dancers give of themselves personally. They bring their own experiences to the studio, and the trust we have as an ensemble delivers its own authenticity and openness. For that I am very grateful.
Rafael Bonachela

Rafael Bonachela was born in Barcelona where he began his early dance training before moving to London, and in 1992 joined the legendary Rambert Dance Company. He remained with Rambert as a dancer and Associate Choreographer until 2006 at which time he successfully set up the Bonachela Dance Company (BDC) to concentrate on the rapid rise of his choreographic career. As a choreographer, he has been commissioned to make works for Candoco, George Piper Dances, ITDANSA Danza, Contemporanea de Cuba, Transitions Dance Company and Dance Works Rotterdam amongst others. In 2008, he premiered his first full-length work „360°“ for Sydney Dance Company. Few months later, he was appointed Artistic Director making headlines around the dance world. His vision for the Company embraces a guiding principle that has seen the repertoire grow with the addition of commissioned dance works from Australian and visiting international guest choreographers. The premiere works are often programmed alongside Bonachela’s own creations, ensuring diversity for audiences and providing much sought after opportunities for his remarkable ensemble of dancers to be exposed to the work of some of the most in-demand choreographers of our time. Bonachela’s internationally recognised talent has seen him work not only with contemporary dance at the highest level but also with artists from popular culture, such as Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner, Sarah Blasko and Katie Noonan as well as leading fashion designers Dion Lee and Toni Maticevski. Such collaborative efforts reflect the inspiration he finds and utilises from culture today. Since the premiere of “360°“, he has created several pieces for Sydney Dance Company including „we unfold“ (2009), “6 Breaths“ (2010), “LANDforms“ (2011), “2 One Another“ (2012), “Project Rameau“ (2012), “Emergence“ (2013), “Les Illuminations“ (2013), “2 in D Minor“ (2014), “Scattered Rhymes“ (2014) and „Frame of Mind“ (2015). In addition, he has remounted outstanding repertoire from BDC such as “Soledad and Irony of Fate“ (2010) and “The Land of Yes & The Land of No“ (2011)… He was named winner of the dance category for The Monthly’s 2013 Arts Awards and listed as one of the (Sydney) magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People in 2012 for his efforts to popularise dance since taking on the job of Artistic Director with Sydney Dance Company and as curator of Australia’s international festival of contemporary dance, Spring Dance at the Sydney Opera House. In 2013, Bonachela was honoured with an Officer’s Cross of the Order of Civil Merit by His Majesty the King of Spain. He is also a receipent of numerious other important awards in Australia and abroad.

Full Moon / Full Moon
choreography / choreography: Cheng Tsung Lung
music / music: Lim Giong
costumes / costumes: Fan Huai-Chih
light design / light design: Damien Cooper

duration / duration: 40 ‘
Premiere / Premiere: Sydney Opera House, 2017

Living in our modern world, the vibrant city lights have endlessly fascinated me and occupied the interspaces of my sight and feelings at night. On the contrary, the moon, nature’s symbolic beauty of night, shines light into my eyes and helps me uncover the mysteries of the unconscious world which I do not know, yet I feel exist.
Cheng Tsung-Lung

A choreographer and a dancer, Cheng Tsung-Lung has served as the Artistic Director for Cloud Gate 2 since 2014. His family owns a slipper factory. Hawking slippers on the sidewalk was part of his childhood and adolescent life. The dynamics of street life and pedestrians’ behaviour later became the inspiration for his choreography. After graduating from the Dance Department of Taipei National University of the Arts, Cheng performed internationally with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan from 2002 to 2004. He served as the Resident Choreographer for Cloud Gate 2 from 2006 to 2010. He is the winner of the No Ballet International Choreography Competition, Germany (2006), the Premio Roma Danza Choreography Competition in Italy (2008), the 16th Masdanza Choreography Competition in Spain (2011), and the Taishin Arts Award (2012) – the most prestigious arts prize in Taiwan. Tsung-Lung was honoured as “Artist of 2011“ by the Performing Arts Reviews, Taiwan, and awarded the Arts Fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council to spend 10 months in New York in 2012. Cheng has choreographed and restaged works for Transitions Dance Company at the Laban Centre, London; Expressions Dance Company, Brisbane; the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; and Focus Dance Company, Taiwan. His productions with Cloud Gate 2 include “A Dignified Joke“, “Change“, “The Wall“, “Happiness and Music“, “Crack“, “Blue Hour“, “Dorian Gray“, and “Beckoning“. In 2016, his work “13 Tongues“, commissioned by Taiwan Festival of Arts, was premiered by Cloud Gate 2 at the National Theater, the National Performing Arts Center in Taipei.

In Cheng Tsung-Lung’s luminous “Full Moon“ there is a profound sense of eternal motion, and not only because his piece has thrilling eruptions of speed and fullbodied swirls. There is vivid life even in moments of what appears to be complete stillness.

© The Australian

World class… an experience as enjoyable and enigmatic as the full moon.
© Daily Telegraph

Sydney Dance Company is a legendary force in Australian contemporary dance. Its performances have appeared on the great dance stages of the world, from Sydney Opera House to Joyce Theatre in New York, Grand in Shanghai and Stanislavsky in Moscow. Its dancers have left audiences breathless, it has presented Australian art to the world, and brought the world to Australia. Dance in Australia would be inconceivable without it. Actively creating and touring new work under the artistic directorship of Rafael Bonachela, the Company maintains an ensemble of 16 exceptional dancers. Programs of dance include works by Bonachela and by guest choreographers including Jacopo Godani, Alexander Ekman and Gideon Obarzanek, as well as collaborations with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and with composers 48nord and Ezio Bosso. Sydney Dance Company has its origins in a group founded in 1969 by dancer Suzanne Musitz. Soon known as The Dance Company (NSW), from 1975-1976 the Company was directed by Dutch choreographer Jaap Flier, before the appointment of Australian choreographer Graeme Murphy in 1976. In 1979 Murphy and his partner Janet Vernon instituted the defining name change to Sydney Dance Company and proceeded to lead it for a remarkable 30 years. Murphy and his collaborators created work that enthralled audiences in Australia and in extensive international touring, including being the first western contemporary dance company to perform in China. Sydney Dance Company has been led since 2009 by Rafael Bonachela. Over the past years the Company has cemented its reputation as a creative powerhouse, with an acclaimed group of dancers presenting new work by Bonachela and other choreographers, designers, composers and musicians. Since 1985 the Company has been a resident of the purpose-built studios at The Wharf in Sydney’s Walsh Bay, minutes from the city’s famed Bridge and Opera House. Its studios offer the largest public dance classes in Australia, with nearly 80.000 attendances annually.