The Final Stage

Folded forward at the waist, knees pressed together, but with her feet apart, Rachel Coulson assumes bird-like form. With her legs held as if bound at the knees, she travels backwards. Arms extended away from her torso giving the impression of wings, she rotates her hands as if her feathery tips are taking readings of the environment around her. In the conjuring of shapes, of course a waterbird appears before my eyes. This is part two of DanceX, presented by the Australian Ballet, where Stephanie Lake Company’s “Auto Cannibal,” replete with Coulson’s bird-like solo, shares the stage with West Australian Ballet’s “Extension to Boom,” Tim Harbour’s “The Delivery,” and Bangarra Dance Theatre’s excerpt from “Yuldea.”

Performance

DanceX: Stephanie Lake Company “Auto Cannibal” / The West Australian Ballet “Extension to Boom” / Tim Harbour's “The Delivery” / Bangarra Dance Theatre “Yuldea” excerpt

Place

Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, Australia, October 2025

Words

Gracia Haby

Bangarra Dance Theatre in “Yuldea” by Frances Rings. Photograph by Kate Longley

Commissioned by Australasian Dance Collective and LDTX/Beijing Dance in 2019, “Auto Cannibal” bears the influence of the supple fluidity and grounded nature[1] of the Chinese dancers Lake first created the work on. Ringed by the dancers, a series of ever-changing duets throbs at the centre. Two dancers connect their extended feet together, before a third dancer taps in, ensuring nothing gets too settled, and a new duet emerges as the first dancer peels away and joins the outer ring once more. In this rotation of twos that change one by one, a chain of movement is passed and the arc of inheritance is drawn. Before gradually, this series of duets, too, gives way to a new pattern.

Sometimes we repeat ourselves. We toy with the same ideas, over and over, because we are drawn to them, and because we’ve yet to exhaust their potential. Because through looking deeper at something, something else is revealed in the process. Because nothing is ever fixed, ideas included, things, like duets, grow into something else. And so Lake brings to “Auto Cannibal” a sense of ‘have I said this before?’ ‘have you seen this before?’ ‘do you do the same?’ relatability.[2] The process is unavoidable, and also capable of yielding a personal depth of understanding. I am familiar with many of these movements in Lake’s choreography and yet I have never seen them before. Equally, I am familiar with some of the movements from the beginning and yet when they are repeated either by the same dancer later on or by a different dancer, the movement is a new incarnation because it has built on the former and grown through variation or repeated telling.

Stephanie Lake Company in “Auto Cannibal” by Stephanie Lake. Photograph by Jade Ellis

This ‘as if sprung’ energy is also within West Australian Ballet’s “Extension to Boom,” in which “the dancers craft metaphorical question marks with their bodies.”[3] Created in response to Two Pianos by Bryce Dessner, the rolling boom comes not solely from the music, but from the choreography, and the mysterious landscape where the two meld together. A central, vertical line of dancers forms and peels off quickly to reveal those at the tail. Elsewhere, a horizonal line of dancers is revealed before it too quickly changes and the dancers pair with their neighbours, making three distinct couples. The cascading sensation here enhanced by the colours of the costumes as the two blues, two teals, and two pinks fuse. As things build, lines of dancers are held in increasingly stronger bands of lighting. There is a sense of never settling, which has carried through from Lake’s work, but in this piece, choreographed by George Williamson, reads differently again. As the dancers also form a large circle in which a rotating pair of dancers feature at the centre, the tidal wave is now a visual propulsion of a playfully, blistering percussive energy.

Tim Harbour’s world premiere “The Delivery” serves a slice of noir starring the Australian Ballet’s Hugo Dumapit, Adam Elmes, and Riley Lapham. For its love language and restaurant setting, I am reminded of the pared down, dead-pan worlds of an Aki Kaurismäki film, where sorrow and harmony, melancholic yearning and resilience, exist simultaneously in the beautiful miniature. Harbour, too, reveals the world in a table setting, and Lapham in her apron could very well be Ilona from Drifting Clouds. Humour and humanity, course by course, replete with a steaming bowl of soup underneath a silver cloche. A flash of hope, a dash of intrigue, a clock rewinds and an alternate outcome is spun. Or had the former scenario which played been the thoughts of Lapham as she looked ahead and thought of what might be and in the realisation decided to steer a new ending before the credits rolled. Finnish tangos aside, perhaps what links the four works most is an exploration of cause and effect. From Harbour’s cause and effect mystery to Lake’s cause and effect of ideas, and West Australian Ballet’s cause and effect of sound to movement, this is the film I roll. With the programme concluding with Bangarra Dance Theatre’s take on the cause and effect of the climate emergency and social justice, to the haunting creak-creaks of the water-holding Mallee tree.

West Australian Ballet in “Extension to Boom” by George Williamson. Photograph by Bradbury Photography

Ending with Act 3’s “Black Mist” from Bangarra’s “Yuldea,” the black mist particles that rain down are radioactive.[4] Their effect is devastating then, devastating now. There is no happy ending here, for there cannot be. What has been done to the land, to the community who care for Country, to those displaced due to colonisation, cannot be undone. In this context, the hope that I initially found within “Yuldea” when seen in its entirety in 2023, is dampened. As I read of the last shrew[5] in Australia becoming extinct, this seems fitting. The note the excerpt sounds is: enough is enough. Cause and effect. Do anything but nothing.

Gracia Haby

Using an armoury of play and poetry as a lure, Gracia Haby is an artist besotted with paper. Her limited edition artists’ books, and other works hard to pin down, are often made collaboratively with fellow artist, Louise Jennison. Their work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and state libraries throughout Australia to the Tate (UK). Gracia Haby is known to collage with words as well as paper.

footnotes

Stephanie Lake discussing her choreography for “Auto Cannibal”, https://www.stephanielake.com.au/auto-cannibal, accessed October 16, 2025.
The same applies to me now as I write, have I written this before? When describing how bodies move with a series of words: am I repeating myself? Yes, I believe I am.
“Extension to Boom” synopsis, West Australian Ballet, DanceX foldout programme, The Australian Ballet, 2025.
In reference to the first atomic test conducted at “Emu Field, on the lands of the Aṉangu. Mushroom clouds reaching a height of 1.4 thousand metres were observed, with radioactive dust (Black Mist) being blown to locations up to 170 kilometres away”. “Yuldea” Study Guide, Bangarra Dance Theatre, https://www.bangarra.com.au/media/ju1fhc1v/bdt-yuldea-studyguidea4v11_2024.pdf, accessed October 16, 2025.
On October 11, 2025, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List declared the Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) extinct. The Christmas Island shrew is the 39th species of Australian mammal to become extinct since 1788.
“Yuldea” synopsis, “Yuldea” programme, Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2023, 5

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