An abstract dance show starring local and Mexican artists that has been rehearsed entirely on Zoom will make its real-life debut at Wollongong Town Hall on Thursday, March 30.
Optimal Stopping is a new experimental work, the first international co-production in MerrigongX, Merrigong Theatre Company’s independent artist program.
After months of virtual rehearsals, the meeting of actual bodies will give audiences a rare insight into the talents of professional dancers, says the show’s choreographer, Lisa Maris McDonell.
“The audience will witness them getting to know each other and the dance together, in real-time, on stage," she says.
“The exciting part is that the audience really get to see the superior skills of dancers when it comes to navigating space and time and choreography, and other bodies in space. Because we are always so well rehearsed, audiences don't really understand that dancers have those skills.”
Born in Sydney, Lisa studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and went on to perform overseas and around Australia. Now 52, Lisa directs a local dance group called Proper Motion. “We're a group of around seven dancers, intergenerational, from around 20 to 62, and from a variety of dance backgrounds.”
Lisa is returning to the MerrigongX program after a successful solo show, The Lobster, last year. Her Mexican counterpart is Raúl Tamez, the 30-something co-director of Mexico’s La Infinita Compañía.
“He is a very well-known choreographer whose star is on the rise,” Lisa says.
“He's just made a work for very well-known company called the Limón Company in New York, which was begun by José Limón, who was a Mexican choreographer back last century [in the 1940s]. And he's the first Mexican to have made a work for the company since Limón himself. Then he went on to win a Bessie award – which was pretty huge, it is a very big New York-based performing arts award – for the work he did for them.”
Lisa first met Raúl when she took a performance to a festival he was directing in Mexico in 2018. “He said, ‘Would you like to do something together, a collaboration, in the future?’ And I said, ‘of course.’ But we found it really hard to get something off the ground because we just had conflicting schedules.”
Then came Covid, lockdowns and the wonders of Zoom.
“I contacted Raúl then and said, 'Do you want to get some dancers together and we'll just do something remotely?' And he said 'Yes'. We organised that first rehearsal [online] and he turned up with another five of Mexico's most incredible dancers.”
During the long lockdown, Lisa – who lives in Woonona and homeschooled her three children – found an outlet in this creative project (as well as her favourite beach walk between Bellambi and Woonona). “For me personally, I found it quite a creative time – and I miss it a little bit,” she says, laughing.
She even organised a cast photoshoot via Zoom, thanks to local photographer Simone Coleman, owner of Children of the Revolution. "She's very creative," Lisa says.
Optimal Stopping received its first grant from Wollongong City Council. “Those emergency grants that were given out are really starting to produce flowers now," Lisa says. "They’re starting to blossom the seeds of the things that were created then.
“I also was very lucky to receive a generous fellowship from Create NSW and Sydney Dance Company.”
Some of the original dancers have moved on since the first rehearsals, but after many months online, seven Australian and five Mexican performers are set to meet live on stage in the next chapter of their cross-cultural journey.
To keep the spontaneity alive after the highly anticipated first-night fireworks, Lisa has introduced a concept based on ‘chance' technique, a term coined by American choreographer Merce Cunningham, who would roll a dice before a show to determine who would play which role.
“We'll be getting the audience members to select the different dancers prior to the show to do specific roles,” she explains. “So each show has different relationships forming between those two groups of dancers.”
Both local and Mexican dancers come from a variety of arts backgrounds, from ballet and contemporary dance to theatre, circus, the Japanese ‘Body Weather’ discipline and hip-hop.
“The beauty of the audience choosing the various roles means that the story kind of shifts according to who you choose for the role. So, in watching it, the audience does bring a lot to the work.
“It's quite abstract, but you will see glimpses of story.”
At an informal local showing, Lisa says the audience saw various themes, from nature and families.
“It's a little bit like poetry where you have to take your own experience in reading the work and your own imagination also. It's not fed as a linear narrative to the audience. It's more like snippets of images, almost like a dream.”
The name is a mathematical term. “Basically it means the optimal or very best time to stop, or begin. But it can also be beginning a certain action for the greatest benefit of all. I feel like that's what the dancers are doing when they're making these live decisions through the work. They’re not like a group of individuals performing. They really have to make decisions about when to do a certain action or stop doing a certain action for the greater good of the piece and everyone in the space.”
Optimal Stopping has already been invited to appear at an international dance festival in Mexico.
"We're really proud that something that is completely locally produced and created is on the world stage,” Lisa says.
“It's really exciting for us.”
Optimal Stopping will be at Wollongong Town Hall from March 30 to April 1, at 7.30pm.
The performers are: Raul Tamez, Yaroslav Villafuerte Rodriguez, Gaby Hernandez, Ilse Orozco, Madi High, Ana Paula Oropeza, Linda Luke, Bubblez, Jack Tuckerman, Madeleine Backen, Susan Kennedy, Saskia Ellis.
Each show will feature an introduction where audience members will help choose the dancers' roles and at the end there'll be a Q&A.
Tickets 'pay as you feel', book here.
Optimal Stopping is supported by March Dance and City of Sydney.
