Sue Healey’s On View: Live Portraits is an evocative and interactive production that explores the dimensions of portraiture and challenges our behaviour and how we see ourselves.
Featuring dancers Martin del Amo, Shona Erskine, Benjamin Hancock, Raghav Handa and Nalina Wait, On View takes the audience on a visually breathtaking journey into the intertwined lives of the characters, revealing their secrets, fears and passions.
Through music, dance and art, the filmic portraits of the dancers interact with their projected images, bringing them to life and using desire, sexuality, love and power to enliven their cinematic selves. As the production unfolds, you’re helplessly drawn to the characters, who all tell an intimate story that speaks louder than the words they don’t use. With a creepy, yet mesmerising music score composed by Darrin Verhagen and Justin Ashworth, On View is like watching a captivating dream you can’t wake up from and don’t want to end.
At times, the characters are tortured souls, battling with their inner demons and trying to face their desires and fears. The energy that emanates from the stage is further reflected through the visual art projected on screens in the background that are, in a sense, given consciousness – it’s like the paintings in the Art Gallery of NSW awakening to become living and breathing forms.
Although there is no actual dialogue, the intimate and captivating performances of the dancers weaves a story without any self-consciousness or boundaries. It is without a doubt a fresh and original production, complemented by the beauty of the dancers’ movements and the onscreen visual images. Visually, On View is a sensory overload that beautifully conveys the power of communication and interpretation that we fill with unnecessary words, or so often take for granted.
4/5 stars
On View: Live Portraits is playing at Carriageworks until Saturday July 25. Visit Performance Space for more details.
