The most radical act in MSTM begins even before the performance proper, when the audience enters not through the foyer but into a liminal backstage space where the boundaries between observer and observed have not yet solidified. This threshold moment, filled with projected dancing forms and Martin del Amo methodically rearranging signage of the show's title, establishes the work's central preoccupation: dance as a living negotiation rather than finished statement.
What follows is sophisticated contemporary dance. Four artists from different generations creating movement that speaks to fundamental questions about collaboration, perception, and how bodies carry artistic lineage forward. Martin del Amo, Sue Healey, Tra Mi Dinh, and Mitchell Christie have created something genuinely rare. This is a work that honours individual artistry while demonstrating that collective creation can achieve meanings impossible for solo artists.
The atmospheric prelude, with Dinh and Christie moving along a wall while Healey illuminates them with a handheld projector, creates immediate understanding that this performance will make visible usually hidden creative processes. When the audience is then led to a tight haze-filled room bounded by curtains, then revealed to be standing on the actual stage facing the house, the reversal of conventional theatre geography becomes a metaphor for the work's larger investigation of how we see and are seen.
Mitchell Christie's opening solo establishes a movement vocabulary of exquisite fluidity, almost in slow-motion with grace that makes visible each muscular decision, each shift of weight and intention. When Martin del Amo joins him, their duet becomes a conversation without words, bodies questioning and answering through gestures that feels precisely calibrated. They move close but never touch, creating a charged negative space between them that speaks to the delicate negotiations inherent in artistic collaboration.
The entrance of Sue Healey and Tra Mi Dinh shifts the work's energy entirely. Suddenly the stage contains not just individual bodies but an intergenerational dialogue, with thirty years of professional experience moving alongside emerging choreographic voices. The contrast proves revelatory. Different movement vocabularies, different relationships to time and space, yet somehow achieving unified artistic vision.
The choreography's shifting tempos create dramatic architectures that move from meditative stillness through passages of near-frenzy. In these accelerated sequences, watching four distinct artists move individually but as if the same form, demonstrates collaborative achievement at its highest level. This isn't uniformity but rather four voices achieving harmony while maintaining their distinct timbres.
The later movement's increased rigidity and sophistication suggests formal structures being both embraced and tested. The work never settles into comfortable patterns, instead it continuously questions its own assumptions about what collaborative choreography might mean.
The stage curtain's deployment as a dramatic fifth character proves inspired. Its brief closing and theatrical reopening creates suspense that is rare in contemporary dance, while its partial opening creates a claustrophobic space that forces the performers' bodies into a proximity impossible when the full stage beckons. Most powerfully, when action occurs with the curtain only partially open, some action is visible, other action is only glimpsed fragmentarily. The work then achieves its most profound metaphor: we only ever see passing moments of others' full lives, catching glimpses of the maelstrom beyond our limited sightlines.
Frankie Clarke's lighting design deserves special recognition. The haze that makes light beams visible transforms the theatrical space into a sculpted atmosphere, while strategic illumination creates moments of revelation and concealment that serve the choreographic dramaturgy perfectly. Gail Priest's soundscape supports rather than dictates the movement, creating an acoustic environment that enhances without overwhelming the physical choreography.
MSTM is genuinely exceptional due to its ability to convey concepts so complex that language fails. There are moments when four bodies moving in the space communicate ideas that no script could articulate. These passages transcend entertainment to become something closer to philosophical inquiry made visible through physical form.
The work's examination of lineage and artistic inheritance never becomes an academic exercise. Instead, watching Healey, returning to the stage after a decade focused on film and installation, move alongside Christie's Cunningham-influenced precision, while Del Amo and Dinh bring their distinct approaches, creates a living demonstration of how dance knowledge transfers between generations without requiring uniformity.
The non-hierarchical creative structure, with all four artists moving fluidly between choreographer and performer roles, produces work that feels genuinely democratic while maintaining artistic coherence. This achievement reflects not just the talent but the trust, time, and institutional support that Campbelltown Arts Centre's commissioning provided.
MSTM represents contemporary dance that is ambitious, successful, intellectually rigorous, emotionally resonant, technically accomplished, and genuinely collaborative. It offers a rare opportunity to witness established and emerging artists creating something neither generation might achieve alone.
MSTM ran 6-8 November 2025 at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
(images: Nat Cartney)
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