Making ‘clouds’ onstage and other strange challenges solved by this design supremo
By Chantal Nguyen
Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela has an unusual problem: his dancers are covered in dissolved plastic pellets, and they won’t come off.
“Even in the shower with lots of scrubbing and soap!” he exclaims.
It’s an unintended side effect of experiments by Elizabeth Gadsby, one of Australia’s most in-demand set designers. The two are collaborating for the first time in momenta, Bonachela’s new dance about the essence of movement.
Elizabeth Gadsby, left, in discussion with Rafael Bonachela and associate designer Emma White during rehearsals.Credit: Pedro Greig
In one key scene, thousands of tiny pellets rain on the dancers, making the air around them seem to vibrate in a joyous hum of light and energy. It’s a beautiful image sketched by Gadsby to perfection. But in practice the pellets are proving untameable, and nobody was expecting them to dissolve when moist.
“We originally tried something a bit spiky,” Gadsby says. “But we needed something that won’t scratch the floor or cut up the dancers.”
Another prototype was an audience hazard. “It bounces into the audience – it’s pretty hectic.”
Gadsby, though, is confident a solution is out there: “We’ve got a big bunch of particle testing to do!”
The central theme of momenta is the essence of movement. Credit:
Her enthusiasm for the hands-on experimental aspect of set design is infectious, part school arts teacher and part scientist. But it’s her conceptual abilities that are renowned in the industry: a skill she uses to design sets for everything from modern dance to period opera, turning directors’ ideas into spaces you can see, touch, and walk through. Gadsby is sought after, her clients ranging from Sydney Chamber Opera to Bangarra Dance Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company, where she was the resident designer.
Bonachela’s visions are often highly abstract. So how does she bring a concept like “essence of movement” to life in a physical set?
“It is to do with that reflective practice of reflecting on a philosophical idea and seeing how that might manifest in life or in the world around you,” says Gadsby.
Gadsby is a third-generation artist, raised by her parents with the non-dualist view that art and science, the spiritual and the physical, are all facets of a unified whole. Her inspiration for momenta was a physics article about gravitational waves.
Another of Bonachela’s concepts, she explains, is “breath”. “If I were to make manifest this sense of breath, how would I do that? And one of the images that came to mind was the idea which is now in the show, of the formation and the dissolution of a cloud.”
But where to get clouds? “You can’t use dry ice with dancers because it makes the floor wet,” she explains.
“We spent a day at Bay 17 in Carriageworks just trying to make clouds, which was enjoyable. And we looked at an artist who makes clouds in museum spaces.
“But he actually wanders around and spritzes them with this watery spray bottle to get the shape he wants. You can’t really have someone spritzing water everywhere during a performance. So we did our own tests.”
Gadsby’s eventual solution? Two foggers pumped through an ice chamber with retractable piping.
“The rigour in Elizabeth’s process and her depth of research has been impressive and inspiring,” Bonachela says. He admits there is always an “element of risk” with first-time collaborations: “You never really know how the dialogue and creative process will flow.” But Gadsby, he says, understood his concept immediately.
“Normally, the sets for my works are quite pared back and minimalist.
“This is a big departure for me, and it’s been such a joy to collaborate with Elizabeth.”
momenta by Sydney Dance Company, May 28 to June 8, Roslyn Packer Theatre.