Review: A QUIET LANGUAGE – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2025 at Odeon Theatre, Norwood

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Wednesday 26th February 2025.

My guest and I sat in the foyer of the Odeon Theatre, glasses of sparkling wine in hand, and watched as the audience members arrived to witness the world premiere of A Quiet Language, the latest work to be presented by Australian Dance Theatre, Australia's oldest dance company. We had been greeted by ADT Philanthropy Manager, Ptiika Owen-Shaw as we entered the building, and it was clear that she was almost as excited as we were, for this was an historic event in that it was a celebration of 60 years of astonishing works being offered by this astonishing company.

Four years in the making, this was the culmination of a collaborative effort between Artistic Director, Daniel Riley, and his troupe of talented artists, but that joint effort is always the case in the works of the contemporary Australian Dance Theatre, as Riley himself is always at pains to point out, but this time the collaboration went further.

Australian Dance Theatre was founded 60 years ago by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM CdOAL, the first Artistic Director of the company. She is dance royalty, and is still actively working within the arts community, and she was Riley's secret weapon. To collaborate with this Doyenne of Dance, this Maestra of Movement, this relentlessly fearless, rebellious, confronting, and challenging artist would be a highlight in anyone's career, but still it went further.

Adam Page is a well-known and highly respected composer, producer, and musician based in Adelaide, and his portfolio is bulging with past triumphs. He has written major works for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, as well as performing solo and in ensemble all over the world. He is also one of the nicest men one could ever meet.

I have known him for many years and he confided in me after the show that the conclusion of this season of work will be the hardest crash, or come down, that he has ever experienced in his professional life. There was, obviously, a great intimacy, and a great deal of love and respect shared between him, Daniel Riley, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, and the dancers themselves in the conceptual development and production of this work.

The bells rang and we began to file into the theatre to take our seats.

The audience was seated in two tiers of seats on each side of the performance space, one to the east and the other to the west, between them a harsh, white floor, bare of decoration or objects. A crisp, clear void.

Jamie Goldsmith gave a beautiful Welcome to Country in Kaurna and English that was gently forthright, insightful, and entertaining, that actually made us feel welcome. A far cry from the pre-recorded and soulless attempts that too often crackle through the speakers in theatres before shows in the Adelaide Festival of the Arts.

Two dancers enter the empty barren space in silence. I have never seen such a minimalist approach by designer Matthew Adey, but with Mark Oakley's lighting and Ailsa Patterson's costume design, it was the perfect decision. The dancers faced us, observed us, crossing the white floor to examine each of us in the two tiers of seats, breaking the silence with body percussion and strained vocalisations, as a third dancer entered the space exclaiming, “I am not a semi-arid person!”.

A fourth and a fifth dancer joined the fray, again scanning us, scoping us out right up to the front row of the audience, literally face to face. “Nice to see you”, one of them said to me. They brought us, willing or not, into their world, into their space, into their story that they were laying before us, pointing out that “their” story is actually “our” story, and inviting us into it.

Wide video screens above the tiers of seating flashed into life, enormous numerals counting the years backward from 1965 as the names of dancers and Artistic Directors scrolled up at enormous speed, as the silence was broken by Page slowly walking around the space with a bass saxophone, making his way to a microphone, his beloved tenor sax, and his array of looping and effects pedals, but his main instrument was his voice. Page layered percussion and sax lines with low droning hums, shifting pitch and intensity as the dancers portrayed every emotion known to humanity.

I saw struggle, anxiety, resistance, exhaustion, resilience, defeat and rebirth, frustration, pride and, eventually, uncontrolled joy. There was a thread running through this performance that was 60 years long. It was palpable, at times visible. It was as slender as spider silk one moment and as thick and grubby as a ship's hawser at others, but it was unbroken and, indeed, unbreakable.

Here's to the next 60 years of Australia's premiere dance company.

The dancers were; Sebastian Geilings, YILIN KONG, Zachary Lopez, Patrick O'Luanaigh, and Zoe Wozniak, and I cannot thank them enough.

(content warning: Zoe does things with her toes that human toes can't actually do.)

Photography, Emmaline Zanelli.