Hooked on Hamlet, these desperate Thesps have to go cold turkey

DANCE
KATMA
The Neilson Nutshell, January 16
Until January 19
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★★
You don’t queue in a subdued ticket line for Katma. You crowd into the Neilson Nutshell’s vestibule, the ushers directing the excited crowd like bouncers. A muffled “doof doof doof” DJ beat (Jack Prest’s music) leaks from behind closed doors.
These swing open and the Nutshell no longer looks like a Shakespearean theatre but a post-industrial warehouse-turned-club. Only a few high stools fringe the room’s edges, so we spread out and stand, some moving to the music as downlights form little wells of brightness. The most tangible thing is that beat. Then the dancing starts.
The room is converted into a post-industrial warehouse-turned-club.Credit: Wendell Teodoro
Katma is the creation of Sudanese dance artist and educator Azzam Mohamed, aka Shazam, and arts company PYT Fairfield where Mohamed is artist-in-residence. He never studied dance formally but trained in the places that form the beating heart of street dance: the underground and community scene.
Bringing that energy, depth and culture to Walsh Bay, the epicentre a mainstream festival, Katma brims over with a raw, euphoric authenticity that is infectious and culturally rich. It immediately pulls the mask off any pretentious modern art you might have recently seen.
Katma is immersive: the audience becomes part of the dance scene as Mohamed and his six dancers move around the room. The audience follow excitedly, whooping and cheering with each new improvisation. It peaks as the dancers lead the now-insatiable audience in a dance-off.
Katma is advertised as a fusion of street and club styles: breaking, hip-hop, krump, waacking, locking, house and Afro dances. On opening night it was dominated by house, emphasising freestyling and vibing, and – as in any improvised work – varying in energy and interest. All the dancers are transcendental, but keep a special eye out for Angelica Osuji and Naethiel Lumbra.
From its Western Sydney base, PYT Fairfield emphasises inclusivity. In this respect, Katma is remarkable. For many in the usual inner-Sydney crowd, there’s little opportunity to experience the richness of the street dance scene unless you happen to know the right dance people or move in certain multicultural communities.
Katma breaks these socioeconomic barriers, exposing greater Sydney’s rich, joyous multicultural fabric. If nothing else, in Raygun’s cringeworthy wake, it’s a reminder of Australia’s authentic street dance scene. To the point where, after the show, a couple of ecstatic audience members panted: “That was amazing – even better than therapy!”
DANCE
THE CHRONICLES
Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 17
Until January 19
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★
Stephanie Lake’s The Chronicles describes itself as “More than just a show…[a] catharsis, a moment of reckoning, and ultimately a reflection on hope.”
After a prologue evoking birth, The Chronicles makes a flying start with a dozen dancers from the Stephanie Lake Company exploding into exhilarating movement. This first section has a thrilling momentum, with the dancers galloping and sliding across the stage’s horizontal planes as if caught up in an irresistible momentum.
It highlights the company’s outstanding talent: the dancers have exceptional physical and theatrical confidence, and an appetite for risk that laces their dancing with raw boldness. They’re clad in green-hued streetwear (Harriet Oxley’s costumes) that gives their athleticism a gritty, grungy edge as they race across the stage, hair and garments flying, to Robin Fox’s electro-acoustic score.
Then comes a sudden tonal shift: a serene children’s choir appears (the excellent Sydney Children’s Choir), bearing lanterns, clad in long white smocks, standing on a set of tall grass on a raised upstage (Charles Davis’s design). They sing the folk song Ah Poor Bird. The mood is now meditative and pseudo-liturgical, but inexplicably so. The shift and disjunct with the production elements create a tonal confusion from which The Chronicles never recovers.
Shifting segments follow. The children engage in mouth percussion. The dancers change into long, flamboyant skirts, exhilaratingly lit by strobe lighting. At one point they scream at the audience. There is a joyous hay bale fight that somehow turns into a more ominous focus on one dancer. In a long final section, bass baritone Oliver Mann sings Forever Young beautifully as white flowers appear on the upstage greenery. The final coda evokes death.
Each section is visually striking, and there are moments of strong choreographic creativity. But without a compelling link between sections, The Chronicles is fragmented and confused about its own message, giving the overwhelming impression of multiple, separate dance pieces bundled as one. Each sudden shift feels almost like a dissociation in identity, requiring an adjustment to engage with the next scene. By the end, the set-and-reset effect makes it a little difficult to be fully engaged.