National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
22 February 2025.
As choreographer Melanie Lane told Dance Informa back in December, “I always work in these kind of speculative, fictional worlds.” With Pulau, we see this in overdrive.
Partly, this other-worldliness is due to the setting, (the Great Hall in the National Gallery of Victoria [NGV]), and partly to the dance’s genesis as a response to the work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (currently being exhibited on site). Yet, wherever the Lane/Kusama crossover points truly lie, Pulau unfolds as a pulsing, writhing odyssey, one that wrenches you into a dark yet ultimately ecstatic realm.
It begins in the NGV foyer, as four dancers converge on one of Kusama’s famed polka dot sculptures. Blink, and you could be at a Paris fashion event, where scornful models don nigh unwearable couture creations. There is something cold and ominous about it. A whiff of designer decadence is palpable.
Soon we are led into the giant rectangular space of the Great Hall, where a sense of ritual becomes immediately obvious. With hints of Manga and Asian noir, and echoes of Italian filmmakers like Pasolini and Sorrentino, Lane coaxes us into a cavernous, sci-fi world of both internal and external struggle. Here, madness and disorientation tussle with a desire for grounding. Belonging.
This is where we encounter the core motif. Pulau means island in Bahasa, the language of Lane’s Javanese heritage. In both Kusama’s Dots Obsession and Lane’s latest the idea of the island is apparent. Ambiguously so; for an island may be as much cell as sanctuary. Thus, when we see the dancers tethering themselves to taut ropes like sailors in a storm – or like charioteers being pulled along by unseen monsters – we witness the voyage being played out in all its complexity.
Underscoring this, a primal aesthetic is evident in costumes that span fetish, shamanic and heroic, and in a brooding soundscape that gathers intensity as Pulau morphs into something resembling a gothic psy-trance, dungeon rave. Transcribing this arc, the choreography becomes increasingly sensual, repetitive, and energised.
What Lane has achieved here is a beguiling synthesis of imaginary worlds. Everywhere there is blur. Slippage. Countering this, the more mappable terrain of islands. Points of stillness in shifting seas. If the conceptual backdrop is located deep in the mists of the psyche, the canvas of performance is animal and directed. Indeed, Pulau could be seen as an act of ceremonial reverence; one artist bowing in the temple of another.
Meanwhile, Eugyeene Teh’s elaborate costumes and Rama Parwala’s ascendant score work to elevate Lane’s movement outlines into an immersive artwork. Together with the monumentality of the Great Hall and the floating presence of Kusama’s polka dot planets, they bring to life a shadowy underworld, before moving towards a euphoric arrival, in which all distinctions are obliterated and all agonies unwound.
Being asked to ‘respond’ to the work of another artist, especially one as well known as Kusama, is tricky. The pitfalls are plentiful. Yet, Lane navigates them nimbly, shifting between multiple worlds with sinuous ease.
For the dancers, however, it is not so easy. Pulau is physically demanding, involving intricate prop handling and costume changes. But they mostly nail it. Take a bow, Katherine Hegeman, Jareen Wee, Te Bajao and Tyrel Dulvarie. You made it to the island.
Or maybe you finally broke away from it; and perhaps we will need a mirror to work out which.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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