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.