Martin Myer Arena, Melbourne.
6 March 2025.
It is sometimes said that we live on the border of order and chaos, embracing and/or recoiling from elements of both. In the 2020s, there is a widespread belief that the friction between them is amplified, and being further exacerbated by phenomenon like surveillance capitalism, biospheric disruption, the doomscroll, and the garish spectacles of billionaire broligarchs, polemic ideology, and social atomisation. The apocalypse, we tell ourselves, is nigh. Either that, or the dawn of a new paradigm is just around the corner.
Into this end-of-days drama strides Indonesian performance artist and dancemaker Melati Suryodarmo. With her dense and allegorical work, Lapse, she draws us, almost by stealth, into the teeth of the gale.
Presented as part of Asia TOPA, it is by turns absurd and direct, quiet and thunderous. It fractures the echo chamber of decline and disorder by shifting it away from the bubble of First World angst and infusing it with the perspectives of the oft-overlooked other. More than that, she situates the tumult in a planetary context, calling to mind tectonic forces beyond our control.
In the broiling world of Lapse, we are truly powerless. We may regard this as either a blessing or a curse. Or perhaps a mix of both.
The journey begins gently, a shrouded figure emerging into the foyer, leading us outside into the evening. We follow for several minutes – many of us not knowing where to look, or busily filming on our phones – until we are shuffled into the formal realm of the black box. From there, four dancers and one musician focus our attention. There, in the shadow of a silver volcano, to the fluttering sounds of dusk, we are confronted with the nature of our present disconnection.
With motifs referencing technology, nature and socio-political conflict, Suryodarmo’s choreography traverses the minimal, the frantic, and the classically graceful fluidity of balletic lineage. However, this is as much collision as fusion, as the ingredients are volatile, apt to devolve into chaos and disorientation. The work’s fast/slow dynamic seems calibrated to disrupt any sense of comfort or seamless transition.
Yet, even at the height of the violence (as the music peaks and storms crack over the rumbling volcano), there appears a through-line of connection. Even as there are lapses in our vision, cracks in our moral compass, there remains an archive of shared memory. In our bodies. In the environment.
Despite this, Lapse avoids the limiting aesthetic of lecturing. Multiple, complex metaphoric and narrative strands are woven into the dance, and are echoed in Yuen Chee Wai’s expansive score. True, there are clear signposts, but the exact trajectory – and probably the final destination – are ambiguous enough for each of us to pick our own path through the jungle.
At times, Lapse feels confused; but upon reflection, the confusion is likely ours. We are the source of the mess and the mayhem. Through her curiously shaped lens of performance art, contemporary dance and Butoh, Suryodarmo doesn’t so much make this clear as invite us to find our own centre of clarity.
But of course, notions of order can only be discerned in tandem with a sense of chaos. This perhaps is the pas de deux in which we all take part, whether we like it or not.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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