Hold Me Closer Tony Danza: A show that brings joy in a sea of gloom

2 weeks ago 6

DANCE
Hold Me Closer Tony Danza ★★★★
Monash Performing Arts Centre, until May 3

Contemporary creation successful Melbourne was a batch much breathtaking erstwhile Gold Coast-based institution The Farm premiered a 20-minute mentation of this rousing comic rhapsody astatine the Keir Choreographic Award successful 2020.

Hold Me Closer Tony Danza is simply a free-form medley of images and symbols of part and unity.

Since then, presenters person cancelled not one, but 2 large-scale creation festivals. The long-running Dance Massive was enactment connected the support successful 2020 and the flash-in-the-pan Frame Biennial disappeared successful 2023 aft lone 1 outing.

Now the Keir Choreographic Award, which was 1 of the richest performing arts prizes successful the country, is besides kaput. Its demise, arsenic is truthful often the mode successful Australia, has caused hardly a ripple successful the arts sector.

It is, successful short, a clip of uneasiness successful the satellite of modern dance. Morale is low. Activity is low. No wonderment this beautifully produced amusement seems similar a lukewarm ray of Queensland exuberance successful the vacant autumnal gloom.

Hold Me Closer Tony Danza is simply a free-form medley of images and symbols of part and unity. It’s besides loaded with a drawback container of theatre gags, including fake endings, improvised relation playing, assemblage dress-ups and a daggy creation battle.

Hold Me Closer Tony Danza has an irresistible prankster vivacity.

The assemblage information – of which determination is plentifulness – culminates with the 2 dancers, Kate Harman and Michael Smith, bouncing astir similar auteur Easter bunnies, trying to wrapper more-or-less compliant assemblage members successful golden foil.

Perhaps this sounds excessively overmuch similar artists playing games with themselves, but determination are besides extended sections of finely crafted abstract dance, including a lengthy decision successful which opposing question styles are gradually brought together.

Whether oregon not it’s existent that each divisions successful the satellite tin beryllium traced backmost to misunderstandings specified arsenic a misheard opus lyric – which is 1 mode of interpreting this portion – Hold Me Closer nevertheless has an irresistible prankster vivacity.

And it’s much than invited astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile truthful small modern creation tin beryllium seen successful Melbourne’s theatres.

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