★★☆☆☆ Never mind the nudity, where’s the dance?

Carriageworks, Sydney
September 3, 2016

While the unreserved front row seemed to have been monopolised by ‘older gentlemen’, the rest of the packed auditorium comprised a mix of hipsters and art-school provocateurs (the couple in front of me sported matching earrings with “cunt” emblazoned on them in large letters). Not your average dance audience then, but not every contemporary dance work offers 17 entirely naked performers in a gruelling 90-minute exploration of humankind and the human body.

Olivier Dubois is director of Ballet du Nord but cut his teeth as a dancer with Ballet Preljocaj and Sasha Waltz. His uncompromising choreography has been much-praised in Europe, less so in the UK, so Carriageworks should get the kudos for giving Australian audiences their first chance to make up their minds, with two performances of 2012’s Tragédie – a work inspired by Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, in which the German philosopher eulogises the liberation of song and dance.

Emerging out of the gloom to the repetitive thud of a single tribal drumbeat, the dancers march emotionlessly forwards and back in gradually changing patterns, a...