‘Direct show at audience’

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 5

‘Direct show at audience’

KAY FORRESTER

By

Choreographers are in the business of communication.

That is the philosophy of the Australian choreographer, Mr Graeme Murphy, who is in Christchurch for the next 10 days to direct the choreographers and composers’ course at the Arts Centre.

“If you don’t reach your audience then you have missed your mark,” he said yesterday.

Who better to know about reaching an audience, especially a large one, than one who choreographed most of the present routines of the skating stars, Torvill and Dean?

Working with the skaters was an experience he thoroughly enjoyed, he said. “Because their routines

have to appeal to 10,000 people at a time, a particular approach was needed. Esoteric was out. Tasteful, exciting, entertaining and virtuoso were in. Fortunately, those adjectives all describe them anyway. They were a dream to work with.”

The skaters’ show was the most recent example of the choreographer’s work that Christchurch people had seen. Earlier last year, the Royal New Zealand Ballet brought “Orpheus” to the city as part of a tour.

Mr Murphy’s approach for the ballet, composed three years ago, was different, and different again for the work he has choreographed for his own company, the Sydney Dance Company. The Sydney company,

which he has led for the last 10 years, provides the opportunity for flexibility.

“I can surprise the audience because they expect to be surprised,” he said. He has a few surprises also in store for the dancers and composers on the Christchurch course. He sees his role as director of the course, which has both Australian and New Zealand participants, as one of encouragement. It is to encourage the choreographers to use the live body of the dancer to enhance their work, and to encourage the dancers to also contribute their ideas to a work.

The key word is collaboration and that is .what the course, the third to be held, is all about.

Dancers and choreographers will pair off and work

on an original work.

The course is intense, but Mr Murphy believes that will bring out the best in creativity.

Yesterday, the first day of the course, was a day for “getting to know each other, of exposing themselves a little,” he said. Over the next few days, the dancers and choreographers will have a series of classes and sessions before beginning their original work.

Mr Murphy sees the Arts Centre as ideal for the course — it has “all sorts of nooks and crannies and trees.”

His fellow tutors on the course are Jack Body, of Wellington, who is the musical director for the course, Dorothea Ashbridge, of Auckland, and Nanette Hassell, of Melbourne.