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R.A.I.N Dance

What form might radical compassion take? If you tease apart an acronym for cultivating mindfulness, and allow a herd of horses to gallop through the middle, what might arise? So speculates Harrison Ritchie-Jones on the opening night of “R.A.I.N,” presented at Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall.

Performance

“R.A.I.N” by Harrison Ritchie-Jones

Place

Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, September 16, 2026

Words

Gracia Haby

Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff in “R.A.I.N” by Ritchie-Jones. Photograph by Darren Gill

R stands for Recognise what is happening. A stands for Allow the experience to be there, just as it is. I, for Investigate, but with interest and care. N, for Nurture with self-compassion.[1] But this rainfall is but a point from which to spring. A framework on which to climb, play, distort, and allow “fiction and shifting realities take over.”[2] Ritchie-Jones and long-time collaborator Michaela Tancheff turn a mindfulness framework into a physical one over the course of 50-minutes. Together Ritchie-Jones and Tancheff continue to “follow the energetic memory of their own structures until their bodies develop rogue agendas,” in an investigation several years in the making, that grows tighter as it loosens and becomes raw.[3]

Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture could equally apply to me in the audience, as a way to scale the scaffolding of “R.A.I.N.” I recognise Roy Rogers and his palomino Trigger in the cantering steps. As Ritchie-Jones crosses his right hand over his left, in a relaxed position, held before his lower torso, he is the classic cowboy at one with his horse. His hold of the imaginary reins imparting consistent, gentle cues. R is for regulating or managing movement. A rein is a direct line of communication between a rider and their horse, and together they are a three-beat harmony. Yet there is only a dancer, bobbing up and down, in this intentionally stripped back, repeated revelation. Sidling up alongside him, slowing to a trot, Tancheff could be an incarnation of the Lone Ranger upon Silver, or Zorro upon the black stallion Tornado. The pace is serene, in a reflective moment. There is a sense of action on the horizon, in the beautiful and fluid storyline muddle, if you allow it, and know it to be.

Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff in “R.A.I.N” by Ritchie-Jones. Photograph by Darren Gill

Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff in “R.A.I.N” by Ritchie-Jones. Photograph by Darren Gill

As Ritchie-Jones, now on all fours, paws at the stage floor as if his hands were hooves, he tries to make a well from which to drink. The rider has become the ridden, and as Trigger, having knelt, pulled a revolver from a holster, and walked upstairs attests, this stunt work for an audience is thirsty work. Tancheff scoops at the earth, and with her cupped hand makes a vessel for Ritchie-Jones-as-horse to drink from. But if I thought I’d fallen into step, in a quick, surreal slip, a scene change. As Tancheff takes Ritchie-Jones’s right wrist and rotates his arm behind him, what was once a limb is now a microphone into which she speaks, shouts, sings, and becomes other. A tender moment turned upon its head, this is the hallmark of “R.A.I.N.” A gallop will slow, only to quicken.

Whether as stallions who’ve had one too many sugar cubes between takes or been asked to hold an extended bow until their muscles quaked, Ritchie-Jones and Tancheff throw themselves into “R.A.I.N” with such conviction. Locked in quiet conversation with one another, I pick up fallen words like clues to link together. In unguarded moments, as they play a game of ‘catch my limb and hold it,’ it almost feels as if I am intruding on their private world. Over to the side of the stage, characteristic of off duty resting, they alternate between throwing up a straight left or right leg for the other one to catch, and seem genuinely surprised by the resulting pattern. Elsewhere, they slowly make their way across the stage, neither one lifting the soles of their feet from the floor. In doing so, they draw a mountain ascent for me. As they pause once more in the wings, catching their breath from the effort of sliding their limbs forward through molasses, their playful connection and fearlessness is radiant. They are at total ease with one another, even when they are moving akin to having been nudged in the back by a horse, and taking turns scaling the back and shoulders of each other. Sometimes Tancheff rides Ritchie-Jones, one arm raised high, and sometimes she piggybacks him, carrying his form with indefatigable ease.

Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff in “R.A.I.N” by Ritchie-Jones. Photograph by Darren Gill

Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff in “R.A.I.N” by Ritchie-Jones. Photograph by Darren Gill

Leaping from the unconscious, it is not just horses cantering in the rain, but the Toreador Song from Bizet’s “Carmen.”[4] Ritchie-Jones and Tancheff disappear from view and both return in the role of the bullfighter Escamillo, singing and gesturing to their fellow toreadors. “Giddy-up” comes the direction, thanks to sound design by Moses Carr and Nick Roder. “Remember not to smile with your teeth,” timely advice. Little by little, in costumes by Andrew Treloar, they are losing their outer layers, in reflection of changing states. A white t-shirt, here, a pair of pants, there, though the costume change is never on view, merely the result. Until finally they are left in red and blue banded, full length, wetsuit-like outfits, perfect for frequent aerial acrobatics. Such is the knack of once knowing your process inside out, you can “start to explore abandoning it and seeking out how it breaks.”[5] As Ritchie-Jones pitches Tancheff forward, they toy with the sound the voice makes as the body moves. Repeatedly tapping various parts of her body, the vibration of the sustained utterance fills the space and becomes its own everyday aria.

Throughout “R.A.I.N,”to relinquish is balanced by resistance. The same also applies to humour countered by downheartedness and solemnity. After the rain, somewhere in the middle, “a horse rolls.”[6] Falling softly, assuredly. But falling. Fade to black, the last mournful note.

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

  1. The RAIN acronym was originally coined by Michele McDonald, and further developed by Tara Brach. RAIN, https://www.tarabrach.com/rain-practice-radical-compassion, accessed September 17, 2026.
  2. Harrison Ritchie-Jones, “R.A.I.N,” Arts House, https://www.artshouse.com.au/events/r-a-i-n/, accessed September 16, 2026.
  3. “R.A.I.N” has been assisted by Studio 24, Chunky Move and City of Melbourne. Chunky Move, “R.A.I.N,” https://chunkymove.com/events/r-a-i-n/, accessed September 17, 2026.
  4. Popular name for Georges Bizet’s aria Votre toast, je peux vous le render from act II, “Carmen” (1875).
  5. Harrison Ritchie-Jones, “R.A.I.N” Artist Statement, Arts House, https://www.artshouse.com.au/events/r-a-i-n/, accessed September 16, 2026.
  6. English translation Bizet’s aria Votre toast, je peux vous le render.

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