The evening begins before the performance proper, with Hayori Maruo's You Sleep On unfolding in the venue's foyer. Here, audience members encounter a lone performer moving through a landscape of music and sound effects, establishing an atmosphere that's both intimate and unsettling. Maruo's accompanying text in the program (a raw meditation on numbness, self-inflicted emotional shutdown, and the exhausting work of breaking people who dare to get close) sets a tone of vulnerability. "I feel numb and empty. As if, I'm scared," the piece begins, describing an anxiety that resonates beyond the personal into something collective.
The structure take a turn when this foyer performer eventually leads the audience into the auditorium, where Georgette Sofatzis-Xuereb's Wild Beauty ensemble already waits on stage. This transition blurs boundaries between preparation and performance, observer and participant.
Wild Beauty transforms the stage into a site of primal investigation. Sofatzis-Xuereb's ensemble examines the physical traits and survival instincts of wildlife through a contemporary dance lens, developing what the program notes describe as "a unique physical and emotional vocabulary infused with a powerful feminine energy." The execution is remarkably precise. Theatrical facial expressions and breath-driven phrasing deepen the mood, creating genuine tension between wildness and control. The choreography reads as both poetic and visceral, reconnecting audiences with an intelligence that predates language. This is contemporary dance that trusts its own vocabulary, resisting the urge to explain itself.
Emma Riches performing Halfhorse Halfwoman (choreographed by Jill Crovister) delivers perhaps the evening's most emotionally direct work. The rhythm is exceptional throughout, with Riches embodying a character seeking approval, facing rejection, and reeling in subsequent despondency. The physical articulation of this emotional arc, being desperate reaching with the gradual collapse of hope, lands with clarity. It's a performance that demonstrates how movement can communicate psychological states with an emotion that rivals anything written as text.
Daniela Zambrano's Form & Flow concludes the program with sophistication and political awareness. Beginning with performers isolated in solo spotlights, the piece gradually explores themes of love and separation through the dancers' energy and spatial relationships. The inclusion of a concertina set piece as both a stage prop and a metaphor proves particularly effective. Its expanding and contracting form provides a visual foil for dialogue addressing immigration and family separation. In an program already rich with content, Zambrano's work stands out for its integration of elements: the musical composition, the outstanding lighting design, and the choreography that never sacrifices artistry for message-making. The piece asks essential questions: "What truly divides us: borders, or the stories we carry within us?," while trusting movement to provide answers that language cannot.
The evening's structure comes full-circle as the original foyer performer rejoins the stage, creating a sense of ritual completion. This framing device elevates what could have been a simple showcase into something more architecturally intentional. A curated journey rather than a collection of disparate works.
What is particular about IDEA NOW is its refusal of safety. Each choreographer brings distinct concerns and aesthetics, yet all four works share a willingness to confront difficult emotional territories and complex sociopolitical realities. From Maruo's psychological unraveling to Sofatzis-Xuereb's animal intelligence, from Crovister's rejection narrative to Zambrano's migration meditation, the program maps contemporary anxieties through bodies moving in space.
If there's a weakness, it's perhaps in the program's density. Four substantial works with heavy thematic content, bookended by the foyer piece's returning presence, makes for an emotionally demanding experience. Some audiences may find themselves saturated. Yet this feels consistent with the stated aim to showcase "thrilling independent dance". Comfort was never the objective.
IDEA NOW performed as part of the IDEA'25 Festival at Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst.
More info: https://www.form.org.au/idea-now-at-eternity-playhouse-2/
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