When Robert Hooke revealed the detailed workings of a single flea writ large on the page, in Micrographia (1665), his translation of scale, from dot to a foldout copperplate engraving, was, and remains, awe-inspiring and accurate. In translating what he saw through the lens of a microscope, the unimaginable appeared, and left no room for particulars to hide. Just as Micrographia’s full title is some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon, in some ways the same could be extended to fit Stephanie Lake’s new work, “Circle Electric,” commissioned by the Australian Ballet. “Circle Electric” makes a magnifying glass of the stage, and places different dancers in different configurations in the spotlight with the intention of observing them and thereupon making inquiries. And while the dancers are not specimens, per se, like the famous flea, the ant, or the louse, they do show hidden worlds and marvels. Hidden worlds and marvels which earlier in the year had their world premiere in Sydney, and now, at last, their Melbourne premiere at the Regent Theatre, shown alongside Harald Lander’s “Études,” last presented by the company in 2012.
Performance
The Australian Ballet: “Études” by Harald Lander / “Circle Electric” by Stephanie Lake
Place
The Regent Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, October 2 & 4, 2024
Words
Gracia Haby
The Australian Ballet in “Études” by Harald Lander. Photograph by Kate Longley
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Looking at Hooke’s documented patterns that a piece of petrified wood makes, in comparison to that of frozen matter, or the honeycomb like units that make up the structure of cork, is akin to looking at my imagined choreographic floorplan for “Circle Electric,” where dancers shake into new formations like blight on a rose leaf.[2] Huddling in groups not organised by height, but governed by a different rule, the perimeter of a large, illuminated ring, the effect is magnetic. With set design by Charles Davis, and lighting design by Bosco Shaw, this ring contains the dancers, until they skitter free, only to be slid, sometimes literally, back under the intense glare of the microscope. The dancers, presenting as a biological system of molecules, grow and disassemble, moving as one mass, ever dividing and colliding. “Circle Electric” begins as a “microscopic investigation of the intricate and the intimate” before, like Hooke’s flea, revealing the bigger picture, “expanding to encompass a telescopic view of humanity,” in Lake’s first one-act work as resident choreographer with the Australian Ballet.[3]
Springing from what is now referred to as “Circle Electric: Prologue,” a shorter work Lake created in 2023 for six Australian Ballet dancers, “Circle Electric” is now fleshed into a work for 50-plus company dancers. As 2020’s “Multiply”[4] a 400-person-strong dance event beautifully revealed, Lake is not only familiar with, but revels in working with large casts. In “Multiply,” participants of all abilities and skill were invited to vibrate and cut loose in Prahran Square, as high above a drone recorded their orchestrated movements, making colourful ants of one and all. Grouped by colour, each block of people pulsed as if cells on a slide. “Circle Electric” taps into this collective energy, where many limbs operate as a collective whole, before homing in on the mannerisms of an individual, such as when Benedicte Bemet, as the apex of a large triangle formation, appears winged by those behind her. As a sky of many peaked arms arced in flight is drawn, whether zoomed out or in, splitting or multiplying, speaking of cells or insects, certain hair-loose hallmarks are sought and ever present.
The Australian Ballet in “Circle Electric” by Stephanie Lake. Photograph by Kate Longley
Crab claw, pincer-slicing, one by one the dancers falter and collapse to the ground, scooped up or pre-emptively caught, as if by telepathic connection, by those around them. With orchestrations by Erkki Veltheim, this tenderness, particularly typified by Adam Elmes, is the empathetic foil to the earlier Muybridge horse in motion, running the course, over and over, on all fours.[5] A circuit breaker, it speaks to the weight of consequences.
In this state of one perceived known becoming something else, “Circle Electric” situates itself. In what Lake describes as the “slippage point,”[6] between recklessness and precision, passing the electrical current, like a game of school yard tag, mutates into a more sinister mass electrocution sequence. Ever one convulsion away from tipping into a contrastive reading of the world, where a ring of light can be a place of shelter and an exposed stadium of jeering onlookers. Overhead, composer Robin Fox seamlessly weaves bird calls before a city awakens, before later plumbing the subterranean and amplifying the earth’s heartbeat, and the ring of light appears almost as if a nest. The knot of dancers inside the safety of the nest, in costumes with neat rows of repeating and connected circles, designed by Paula Levis, move as individuals before raising their arms upwards in unison. The secondary nest their overlapped arms creates against the dark sky, draws a precarious, momentary safety. The circles on their costumes call to mind the luminous nodules on the side of a finch’s beak which serve as a ‘feed me’ beacon for when the parents return to the nest. Together with their arms lifting skyward, the nestling dancers practice survival of the fittest: the individual conforms to the group, the biggest and loudest gets fed. And just like that, a nest is next a sports’ stadium. The circled costumes, like the luminous nodules of the nestlings themselves, disappear over time, replaced by tonal variations of a theme, and Lander’s grand plié in fifth position “Études” after interval.
The Australian Ballet in “Études” by Harald Lander. Photograph by Kate Longley
Seen in this order, Lander’s oft-described love letter to classical technique and the daily ritual of company class, “Études,” from 1948, mirrors Lake’s dancers milling on the stage as if in a theatre’s foyer during their own interval: foundation making, opinion forming. The contrast between the two hinted at similarities too, albeit through dissimilar steps and meanings ascribed. From the lines and shapes drawn on the stage, an ‘X’ of light in “Études” grand jeté express for a ring of current in “Circle Electric,” to the silhouettes at the barre for the conveyor belt frieze running across the top half of the stage, the ‘studies’ build, piece by piece, as muscles warm up. And though both works showcase the company as a whole, it would be remiss not to mention Samara Merrick in “Circle Electric,” and the brilliant precision of Ako Kondo, Chengwu Guo, and Joseph Caley in “Études.”
The connection between the two worlds is made all the more apparent when you consider that Lake created “Circle Electric” in response to knowing it would be presented with “Études.”[7] Lake almost intercepts Lander’s slow-speed, controlled chaînés on the diagonal. Both, in their own way, exploring notions of repeat, repeat, repeat, and full velocity; Lake, through freedom, Ladner, control. Ending the night with the exhilaration, and nowhere to hide exactitude of “Études,” the wait for 2025 begins.
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.
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