Ground Control

Moss Te Ururangi Patterson describes his choreographic process having a conversation with other elements. As he describes pushing himself under the waves, and a feeling of meditative, buoyancy as he floated in space, the impression of light beneath the water was paramount. And it is light which features in his work, “Te Ao Mārama,” performed by members of Royal New Zealand Ballet, who surge forward, with their arms overhead. “Te Ao Mārama” was originally created as part of Lightscapes 2023, to celebrate the company’s 70^th anniversary, but equally the opening night of part one of DanceX at Arts Centre Melbourne seems an ideal position to commence: in a conversation with coming into the light, into consciousness, of becoming aware of something within that was perhaps previously undetected or unrecognised.

Performance

DanceX Festival: Royal New Zealand Ballet in “Te Ao Mārama” by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson / The Australian Ballet and The Australian Ballet School in “Allegro Brillante” by George Balanchine / Restless Dance Theatre in “Seeing Through Darkness” / The Australian Ballet in Lucy Guerin's “Ground Control” / Dancenorth Australia in “Wayfinder” (excerpt)

Place

Playhouse, Arts Centre, Melbourne, Australia, October 8, 2025

Words

Gracia Haby

The Royal New Zealand Ballet in “Te Ao Mārama” by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson. Photograph by Stephen A'Court

To Patterson, the movement within “Te Ao Mārama” is also having “a conversation with the oro, or the vibrations that are in a space . . . [exploring] the idea of a wānanga, finding ways to connect.”[1] Something which is typified when the dancers are held in shafts of light and elsewhere when they encircle a central figure, and lay their palms around his face. Rotating the kaleidoscope, and beginning as if already mid swing, the light, bright pirouettes of the Australian Ballet and the Australian Ballet School’s “Allegro Brillante” by George Balanchine follows. Swept along by Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the contrast between “Te Ao Mārama” and “Allegro Brillante” reminds me of why I love short stories and the vibrational crossover between each tale. Both lyrical and precise, yet in a distinct manner. Both what such a night needs.

Belle Urwin and Alain Juelg in “Allegro Brillante” by George Balanchine. Photograph by Kate Longley

Light or rather the sense of ballet’s illusion of lightness is also at the forefront of Lucy Guerin’s “Ground Control,” presented by the Australian Ballet. From holding balances for Balanchine, in costumes by Kate Davis, the dancers are ready to respond to gravity. As Henry Berlin and Adam Elmes crawl to the side, Mio Bayly balancing atop their backs, the focus shifts to Samara Merrick. Wearing headwear that reminds me of one-part Esther Williams swimming cap to one-part chain mail worthy of Joan of Arc, Merrick, at the foot of the stage, puts on her pointe shoes. The quiet, familiar ritual, a pause before a radical shift. “Ground Control,” created for the Australian Ballet, and which premiered recently on a national tour, explores how “the ground or the floor or the earth is almost like their control centre, as they are always responding to gravity, always connected to the earth.”[2] To move with lightness, fluidity, and freedom, as Guerin describes, takes terrific strength. Merrick pushes away the floor and, together with Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir, Movement IV, “This work, which I began with hope,” with its Russian Orthodox leanings, launches into the stratosphere. A wisp of magenta-hued, transparent fabric falls from high above and cloaks her form, and later Elmes’s too, in the exquisite aerial transformation, making visible Guerin’s “idea of the physical body meeting thought.”

Ryan) Sidney Debba and Charlie Wilkins in Restless Dance Theatre’s “Seeing Through Darkness.” Photograph by Matt Byrne

Restless Dance Theatre’s “Seeing Through Darkness,” inspired by the “flowering and imperfect expression”[3] within the paintings and drawings of Georges Rouault addresses light and its trace elements in a different way again. Initially playfully reminiscent of the cut-out silhouettes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing on a record player illuminated so that their shadows, projected on the walls, danced about the room, “Seeing Through Darkness” uses moving lights on a curved track to alter the dancers’ projected shadows and the colours they cast. And where Guerin invited me to yield and resist, now the opportunity to query, as Rouault did: “what do we leave behind?” Writ large on the tall screens which frame the stage and make of it a record, the silhouettes in a spectrum of colours overlap and flow. As the lights move, scale follows suit, and so the cast is not only multiplied, but towering in full magnificence.

Restless Dance Theatre, Australia’s leading dance company working with neurodiverse and disabled artists, accentuate not only the physical form the way Rouault did, but love. And it is love which continues to chime with collective joy in an excerpt from Dancenorth Australia’s “Wayfinder.” Featuring the artwork of Hiromi Tango, a colourful, knitted embodiment of unbridled ebullience, the dancers scoop up the many squiggly threads by the handful, further activating their presence and melding colour ways. A timely reminder to “transcend the words that [seek to] define us” and be lead, instead, by “the stars, the waves, and the sun,”[4] for that is where the authentic is situated.

A fitting close, last stop: awe and wonder.

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

Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (transcribed from interview), Royal New Zealand Ballet’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfoW3jr6WOw, accessed October 9, 2025.
Lucy Guerin (transcribed from interview), The Australian Ballet’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fNLjEd-sU, accessed October 9, 2025.
Georges Rouault describing his paintings, quoted by Restless Dance Theatre, “Seeing Through Darkness” media kit, https://restlessdance.org/show/seeing-through-darkness/, accessed October 9, 2025.
Dancenorth, “Wayfinder” synopsis, DanceX foldout programme, The Australian Ballet, 2025.

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