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Fiction
Synopsis
Choreography seems to be presented polemically. At one end there is the traditional artificial and fictional narrative based ballet. At the extreme other end there is the (abstract) process. Our aim is to transgress from one extreme to the other. Fiction is viewed as one complete work by two choreographers. Phillip Adams has purposefully created a magnificent Arabian ballet complete with flying carpet, genie and dialogue. He has translated to stage the cinematic nostalgia of a Hollywood Arabian fantasy romance. The light of dawn illuminates the desert the audience surveys the massive backdrop of a full-blown technicolour sand dunes. And so the journey begins....As Adams' ballet draws to a close the backdrop is seamlessly flown out revealing a modern day New World of fiction that is blended with the old. Rebecca Hilton's Fiction is now performed in real space. The stage is stripped bare except for a surreal picket fence that divides the stage in half. Hilton's Fiction continues using the modern day family as a structure. The ballet drama is removed and then replaced with a stylised but highly abstracted narrative. There is a sense of deadpan humour in revealing the behavioural nuances and conflict/comfort found in the nuclear family. Fiction is a comment on the way we view our worlds in modern fiction and in retrospect mythology. The imagery of this work is epic, Hollywood technicolour juxtaposed with modern culture that is as intricate and sumptuous as a Persian carpet.
Premiered May 19th 2005
Choreography: Phillip Adams and Rebecca Hilton
Artistic Associate: Linda Sastradipradja
Live Sound Composition: Lynton Carr
Performers: Brooke Stamp, Ryan Lowe, Carlee Mellow, Joanne White, Tim Harvey, Clair Peters
Lighting: Benjamin Cisterne
Graphic Design: 3 Deep Design
Photography: Jeff Busby
Video
Excerpt of Fiction.
Reviews
The Australian
Bodies drop on the floor, slap and droop along a wall or fold like dough across others with suppressed hostility until rage and defiance blow the movement into a series of robust counterpoints - Lee Christofis
The Age
Hilton’s choreography is carefully balanced: the small incidents build to reveal the complexity of familial relationships – the good, the bad and the occasionally ugly - Hilary Crampton
The Age
Hilton’s dancers are locked against the back wall, their gestures puppet-like, apathetic: limbs fling, joints collapse, faces pout - Hilary Crampton
The Age
Adams work begins as a sort of Boys Own adventure in some imagined desert. Beautifully constructed incidents – the camel journey, frieze – like against the desert backdrop, is inventive and appealing - Hilary Crampton
The Age
Fiction, choreography by Phillip Adams and Rebecca Hilton is a dance equivalent of an exercise in creative writing employing two entirely different approaches to narrative - Hilary Crampton
The Herald Sun
Rebecca Hilton’s orange clad dancers enact family rituals and relationships. The intense colour is striking and the dancers play off this unusual energy - Stephanie Glickman
The Herald Sun
Choreographer Phillip Adams has a taste for the bizarrely kitsch and, with a harem ballet on a Persian carpet and a wooden genie communing the dancers Fiction is no exception - Stephanie Glickman
Supernaut Online review
I think Phillip Adams is the number one choreographer in Australia; no-one comes close to him for sheer insanity and comic genius, let alone his choreography, whether vertiginously deconstructed ballet or the kind of multi-limbed partnering that should belong in the best of Hong Kong martial arts flicks, he\'s the crack-smoking Grand Theft Auto number one playa of contemporary dance south of the Tropic of Cancer - Frances d’Ath
