Canberra Reviews

The opening sequence of Melanie Lane’s MOUNTAIN is extraordinary. An accumulation of bodies is slowly revealed, layered together amongst deconstructed denim, initially almost impossible to distinguish from one another. Limbs emerge, bodies shift and the mass slowly transforms. It is human and geological at once – a mountain made of bodies, continually forming and reforming. And the beautiful revelation of each extraordinary performer.

It is a striking introduction to a work concerned with ascension and descent, connection and collapse, and I really appreciated the duration that allowed us to enter slowly into Lane’s world. 

Throughout MOUNTAIN, bodies accumulate and separate, climb and fall, becoming peaks, ridges and strange shifting formations. At other moments they seem almost winged. The work moves between solidity and flight, the monumental and the unexpectedly delicate.

Akira Isogawa’s costumes are central to these transformations. Deconstructed denim distorts and extends the dancers’ forms, while underneath, fitted lace bodysuits reveal the individual lines of each body. Wide sheer sleeves become wings; fabric, hair and flesh continually alter the silhouettes. The dancers unite, separate and reform – at times individual creatures, at others, parts of a single organism.

Yet there is perhaps a cost to revealing so much so early. The costumes are so extraordinary in that opening sequence – surprising, sculptural and transformative – that their visual journey feels as though it peaks almost immediately. As layers are shed and the dancers’ bodies become more clearly defined, there is pleasure in seeing the lines beneath, but no subsequent costume image quite matches the startling impact of that first reveal.

There is an exhilarating sense of danger in Lane’s movement language. Bodies tilt at unusual angles, crawl, crouch, climb and transfer weight unexpectedly. The performers’ extraordinary control never quite removes the possibility of collapse.

Equally impressive is the relationship between CLARK’s electronic score and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra musicians performing live. Strings and piano slip almost imperceptibly into and out of the electronic soundscape. The integration is so seamless that at times it becomes impossible to locate where the live musicians end and the recorded score begins.

And the grounded presence of the CSO musicians’ bodies in the space offers a reverential contrast to the ethereal bodies of the dancers.

Another beautiful image comes as the dancers join hands in a circle, inevitably recalling Matisse’s The Dance. After so much shifting, climbing and instability, there is something deeply affecting in the simplicity of bodies connecting and carrying one another.

There is particular resonance in MOUNTAIN closing Canberra Theatre Centre’s 2026 Independents program. Across the preceding days, original works by independent artists were presented in the intimate Courtyard Studio. MOUNTAIN itself began its journey at CTC through a creative development in the 2022 New Works program.

Seeing it return four years later, fully realised on the Playhouse stage, offers a glimpse of the potential journey ahead for each of those new works – and of what can become possible when independent artists are given space, resources and time to develop ambitious ideas.

MOUNTAIN is at its strongest in transformation: body into landscape, clothing into architecture, acoustic into electronic, individual into collective. In Canberra, another transformation is visible too – a work that began in development returning at scale, while a new generation of works begins its own journey.