SATELLITES
Reviews
SATELLITES Royal New Zealand Ballet commission to Daniel Belton and Good Company Arts
King-hit of the evening comes in Daniel Belton's new commission Satellites, a spiraling, silvery, cosmic exposition on deep space and our tracked orbit through it. A kinetic sculpture by Jim Murphy, motion graphics by Jac Grenfell, and Jan-Bas Bollen's electronic soundscape create a mind-blowing multidimensional environment for Belton's striking choreography for 16 dancers. White-out costuming is by Donnine Harrison. Satellites is stunning. Let's hope Belton has more opportunities in the "real" world, to match his international successes in dance film, concept and design. Reviewed by Bernadette Rae, NZ Herald Aug 1st 2014
Daniel Belton's extraordinary work Satellites uses the medium of light: in projections, piercing lasers and glittering refractions to create a world suspended in the ether, where white-clad dancers clasp gleaming orbs as they dance against a background of partially revealed, ever-rotating circular bodies - perhaps the satellites of the title. The work features the music of Dutch composer Jan-Bas Bollen, kinetic sculpture by Jim Murphy and motion graphics by Jac Grenfell. Nigel Percy's lighting design is particularly impressive. Reviewed by Jenny Stevenson, 31 Jul 2014 Theatre View NZ
This is a stunning display of Daniel Belton's talents as designer and choreographer. The work begins with a loud rumbling sub-bass reverberating and vibrating through the auditorium. The curtain rises on huge hanging light- attracting sculptural ‘satellites', mirrored circles held by swirling, leaping, weaving dancers, and an intriguingly hypnotic display of fine, moving arcs of coloured light. Moving images are projected on to gauze and reflect off costumes and props. The dance moves seamlessly from lyrical leaping, stepping and turning to angular holds and lifts, and unexpected moments of stillness. The sound track progresses through deep bass, screaming high notes and an ongoing driving rhythm. Finally, I no longer see the dancers as three-dimensional and the light display as two dimensional; I see the reverse: two dancing ‘satellites' spin slowly through space, among moving images of light between gauze and backdrop, as the other dancers step and pose in a single beam of side lighting along the front of the stage. For me, this is an incredibly satisfying and awe-inspiring sound and visual feast. Reviewed by Dr Debbie Bright, 7 Aug 2014 Theatre View NZ
This was the world premiere of Daniel Belton's stunning Satellites. To a compelling original score by Jan-Bas Bollen, (correct) Belton incorporates mesmericly beautiful motion graphics by Jac Grenfell, and fascinating kinetic sculpture by Jim Murphy. The costumes (Donnine Harrison,) are simple and apt and the splendid lighting is by Nigel Percy. All facets of the production, including totally unified ensemble work from the Company, are in complete harmony. What remains is a feeling of wonderment at the vastness of the solar system and our small space within it. Dominion Post, Reviewed by Ann Hunt, Aug 16th 2014
It is an absolute pleasure to witness the World premiere of Daniel Belton's work, Satellites. The subsonic throbbing bass pulses hit me first, humming through my being. Jan-Bas Bollen's soundscape has a beat that resonates within me on some energy level, and I have imagery of Native American drummers and dancers swirling around my mind. It is too much to take in all at once, and I don't. I am so transfixed by this relentless deep sound, that my mind takes in different aspects of this work one at a time. It is after the dancers start circling and spinning that I notice Jim Murphy's stunning kinetic sculptures hanging above the stage , slowly and inevitably spinning and circling around their own axes, then the visual backdrop by Jac Grenfell beautifully echoing the kinetic sculptures, and tracing ley lines of movement in space. Everything within the performance connects for me in that moment. The mirrored reflective circles the dancers deliberately carried and placed, began to glint into the audience, tiny fine reflections making up a silver thread umbilicus connecting each and every one of us in the audience into the entirety of the work itself. Precisely in that moment, I feel complete. Then within the soundscape, the bass is turned down, and all is well again within my world. Belton's choreography is in groups, lines, trios, duets, and solos. It slowly pours into the floor and out of the floor as dancers are lifted and assisted by each other. The dancers move with a sensuality, a physicality that is languid, sexy and strong. Stepping out in well-formed canons, creating fascinating shapes that seem to never stop moving. Space is everywhere, like an ancient universal mathematic language. The soundscape changes only a little throughout this work, adding in and taking out different accents, and timeless sounds, but always returns to the deep sonics. Donnine Harrison's costumes are perfect in their white simplicity, the dancers as modern space travelers. Nigel Perry's sublime lighting adds exactly the right amount of atmospheric tone. My hats off to you Mr. Belton. This work owns itself utterly, completely and deliberately. I hope we are privileged to see more choreographed staged works by you in the future. Reviewed by Kim Buckley, 10 Aug 2014 Theatre View NZ
Satellites; choreography/conceptual and stage design Daniel Belton, music Jan-Bas Bollen, sculpture Jim Murphy, costume Donnine Harrison, animated projection Jac Grenfell.
It is perhaps no surprise then that the absolute highlight of the program is a rare chance to see Belton again having the resources to choreograph a larger group of live dancers moving before a large and complex live projection of material onto a somewhat indeterminate, diaphanous scrim. Belton's last major multimedia dance piece was nearly 14 years ago now, so one can only hope that his latest production might finally enter the international repertoire and be seen again. I will be writing in detail on this piece shortly for RealTime Australia (https://www.realtime.org.au/dancing-in-the-divide/), so I shall not go into great detail here, except to say that Belton's work sits well upon the RNZB. The piece is resolutely sculptural and scenographic. Like the ballet maestro I cited above, William Forsythe, Belton is of the opinion that it is perfectly possible to generate ballet in which the dancer is but one element within an array of other materials, including images of slowly cycling planetary bodies and saturnalian disks (Jac Grenfell's projected animations), harsh, electro-glitch music irregularly thunking and funking away within a dense bed of radiophonic noise (a wonderful if deceptively simple score from Jan-Bas Bollen), further on-stage sculptural elements (reflective discs carried by the dancers whose scattered beams link the flat projections to the 3 dimensional on stage space within which they dart, together with two further massive metal discs which angle themselves imperiously above the dancers) and sculptural costume (striking, Bauhaus-style silver tutus from Donnine Harrison). Choreographically, Belton seems to be aiming for something like the Golden Ratio on stage: the mathematical snail-like shell of subdivided segments spiralling out from each other which was used as a key organising principle for Synthetic Cubist artists and teachers like Juan Gris and Albert Gleizes. This sense of spinning accumulation, here seen mostly side on as dancers are pulled and curled in trajectories which by and large tend to take them from left to right (except for the final closing ballerinas in Bauhaus tutus). Belton's shapes and structures may be more open, more given to breaking the line for a supple sense of relaxed posture, than those of Balanchine, but the two choreographers are working within a remarkably similar idea of formalism and classical modernism. I suspect that Balanchine's Allegro would only need minor tweaking and an increased tendency to drop off-side, to sit happily against the design of Satellites, whilst Belton's choreography would only need its urgency upgraded to go against Tchaikovsky. Reviewed by Jonathan W. Marshall, 25 Aug 2014 Theatre View NZ
One aspect that impresses throughout the evening is the level of choreographic skill. This is true of Daniel Belton's work Satellites. It is heartening to see a resident New Zealand choreographer given the opportunity to work with the company; the start of new trend hopefully.
The design element of the work is striking, as is the overall choreographic structure. The dancers inhabit the languid movements with surety as they drift through the space, interacting simply at first then building into complex layers of solos interspersed with duets and trios. A refreshingly calm and tender world is created, where dancers support and gently tug each other into statuesque forms.
Everything in the visual field is constantly changing. Daniel Belton has established a strong and distinctive aesthetic in his work over many years and it is wonderful to see him completely fill the proscenium with movement, light, and sound. His creative team are superb: Donnine Harrison (costumes), Jim Murphy (kinetic sculpture) Jac Grenfell (motion graphics) Jan-Bas Bollen (music) and Nigel Percy (lighting). Together these artists create an elegant world that provokes our imaginations into spacious realms. Whilst alluding to a future of new technologies, the work feels in some ways ‘old fashioned' as if harking back to a modernist era – perhaps a nod to the Bauhaus masters, or rather a need for a more rigorous investigation of a less ‘known' movement vocabulary. Reviewed by Lyne Pringle, 16 Aug 2014 Theatre View NZ