Celebrating bliss joy rapture, Anima (Latin for Soul) the most touchingly beautiful new contemporary dance work by Sydney Dance Company Artistic Director, Rafael Bonachela premiered tonight at the Roslyn Packer Theatre.
The refined and elegant movement of this piece beckons us on the next step of the spiritual journey that Bonachela has been curating over the evolution of his choreography.
Anima is extraordinary elegant exquisite, an ethereal playfulness that radiates paradise, that displays our interrelationship with spirit, that interweaves our connectedness as one.
Light a recurring theme for Bonacela, is portrayed not only beautifully in movement, but delightfully through minimalistic white and shades of white as grey costuming, and wonderously by video collaborator Clemens Habicht.
As the curtain raises after interval, Bonacela's quirky humour starts the show teasing with just a few short minutes before the curtain goes down, and the house lights come up. Was that it? Is it over?
Then we feast on the main body, the main bodies, the nimble sprightly bodies of the company dancing in and out of light. Within them is a freedom that breaks out of attachment. Behind them morphed illuminations dance on the screen. It is unworldly. We feel transported. At times we feel like we are taken to another time, another place. That we are carried into a faery grove at midnight, or into the heavens for eternity.
Before being enthralled by this wonder-full new piece, the Untamed double bill also featured a reprise of the Nankivell dance Wildebeest. While an entertaining and interesting dance in itself, the mechanical industrial nature was a superb preliminary to the gentle spiritual flow of Anima, creating the most beautiful harmony within contrast that we have seen to date from Sydney Dance Company.
Untamed. This double bill is showing for a short one week Sydney season only so be quick.
Anima rehearsal images by Peter Greig.
