Review: Back from Front

Dean Walsh’s Back from Front
Performance Space


While absorbing the many beautiful moments in Dean Walsh’s new choreographic work, Back from Front, I was constantly reminded of one of the most beautiful art deco buildings in Sydney – the Hyde Park War Memorial.

Back from Front is Walsh’s self described ‘reflection on the cycles of violence’. But this dance piece is more specifically an intimate and close look at how the theatre of war impacts the soldiers and the people around them.

In the same way, a visit to the War Memorial has the same affect. Walking up the main stairs adjacent to the pool of remembrance, your head is immediately made to bow as you look down into a pit where a statue portrays a generic dead soldier bent backwards as some type of sacrificial lamb.

If you enter the War Memorial from underneath you can see the statue from ground level and look up to see three female figures holding the body aloft. His wife, his mother and a nurse.

Walsh, too, makes his reflection universal by not concentrating on one particular conflict but rather throws forward a collection of images that are from any war - the First World War, Second World, Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam or even the Gulf.

Using five dancers throughout the show, Walsh constructs domestic scenes and throws them against the violent reality of mass war. The opening alone is an amazing moment when you see a house-wife sitting at a kitchen table. Suddenly a soldier emerges from a wall that has camouflaged him and he enters the space as some type of ghost.

The scenes flow on from this beautiful beginning that take you to other domestic scenes, parents reacting to news of the death of their son, hospital scenes, love scenes and scenes of man-to-man conflict.

What is most impressive about Walsh’s production is the state-of-the-art multimedia element. There are times when the images are over-the-top and detract from the stagecraft. Most of the time, however, it fills the space without being over-bearing and even shrinks down to add slight and elegant elements to some beautiful dance sequences.

It is these sequences when Walsh is at his best, but unfortunately he is let down by male dancers who don’t have the presence they need to dominate the space as images of the military. On the other hand, the performances by the female dancers are strong, intricate and moving, most particularly from Marnie Palomares – one of the finest new dance talents I have seen recently.

But don’t expect this production to hit you from all sides with special effects. It is just like the War Memorial in that you should sit back, consider it and let it immerse you. Back from Front, like the architecture is a beautiful and confronting reflection.


Until 10 May
$20-30
Carriageworks
http://www.performancespace.com.au/
Ticketmaster 1300 723 038