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Mixed Doubles Leigh Warren Dance & Tankstream Quartet Elder Hall, Adelaide University, until 28 Feb 'Mixed Doubles', a light-hearted look at the world of tennis, is perhaps the best realised and user friendly work from Leigh Warren Dancers in a number of seasons. For one thing, its story is simple and direct and we all know something about tennis, even if its inadvertent channel surfing through long summer days of dull programming. In fact, given the topic, I went channel surfing in my head a couple of times. The production - at just an hour - is short and taut but also languorous; direct and to the point, but also a dalliance with the rules and culture of tennis The dancers saunter onstage and warm up, and the Elder Hall is gradually enfolded into the story, via some carefully lobbed tennis balls, and sonorous explanations of the rules of tennis (Andrew Martin, voiceover). When the dance component proper begins it takes some time to settle into the idea of things, because dance is not a natural medium for representation of sport. Leigh Warren, however, has spent a lot of time thinking on this, and the choreography is as precise a guide to recurring motif and patterns in tennis players as you could get. Along the way there's some pointed contemporary touches - Lleyton's absurd 'steepled fingers to head' routine, for example. A minor criticism is of the large screen visuals which sometimes serve to draw attention away from the dance, but I found this was when the story became a little languid in any case. More to the point, the glorious Tankstream Quartet, playing a score composed by David Hirschfelder, occasionally lacked substance and bite, and some more robust sound reinforcement (sorry purists, that's amplification) would serve as a partial remedy. The 'cello, in particular, had some trouble penetrating into the further reaches of the admittedly large Elder Hall, but the simple melodies augmented the dance arrangements perfectly. I can't guess why the Quartet moved around the stage - unless to underscore the different acts in the dance - yet it hardly matters. 'Mixed Doubles' is a soothing, cheeky, and appealing piece of contemporary dance, in no way weakened by the decision to utilise the latest technological gimmickry.  |
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