Live review: Dance, Lucinda Childs Dance Company, Perth Festival
Heath Ledger Theatre, February 25

Contemporary dance troupes and ballet companies have been exploring minimalist music with increasing interest and ardour over the last few decades. Whether the score is specially commissioned for this purpose or a pre-existing work, minimalism is arguably the musical genre most suited for interpretation through dance; often the two are so closely linked that the choreography could be seen as a direct visual translation of an aural artform, or the vice versa.

But this striking synergy between two worlds didn’t just emerge fully formed; New York choreographer Lucinda Childs and her dancers paved the way in a 1979 collaboration with composer Philip Glass and video artist Sol LeWitt. That production, a modern classic, enabled Childs to create a language and mode of expression in dance that could interact with some of the most gripping music of our time in a meaningful way.

That the work was simply named Dance says it all: rather than the usual “story” ballet with characters and plot, this was movement as narrative in its own right; the interplay between music and the body as dialogue.

Seen in its revival production by the...