Meat Market, North Melbourne
October 8, 2016

Beneath the vaulting ceiling of the Meat Market, Melbourne choreographer Lucy Guerin has created a darkly beautiful but ominous, shadowy world for her latest work The Dark Chorus. At the centre of the space is a wan circle of light. Around it darkness. A chorus, clad in elegant, black gowns suggesting times past, stalks the periphery of the illuminated circle, muttering darkly in a loud whisper about a curse, their horror at what’s happened, the fear they are being followed. Not all of what they say is intelligible but we get the gist, and the sense that this communal voice is persistent and powerful.

^{Stephanie Lake, Tyrone Robinson, Jessie Oshodi, Benjamin Hancock and Lilian Steiner in The Dark Chorus. Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti}

Then from one of the black gowns a tiny dancer (Lilian Steiner) emerges in everyday white cotton shorts and T-shirt. Joined by a similarly clad Tyrone Robinson, they seem to be sizing each other up, testing themselves and each other. As the work unfolds, they, and the other three dancers – Jessie Oshodi, Stephanie Lake and Benjamin Hancock – appear from the...