Ghostlight, the new short dance film choreographed by Adam Blanch and funded by Catapult Choreographic Dance Hub, could not have been more aptly named.
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When the film's featured dancer, Brayden Gallucci, appears on screen, our eyes are immediately confronted with the intimacy of the camera's focus.
Videographer Ashley de Prazer then zooms out, allowing our eyes to take in the vast, uninhabited stage surrounding Gallucci.
We watch the back of his head move, looking around, taking the emptiness in, contemplating it.
A once bustling theatre, now reduced to a ghost town.
And then Gallucci begins to dance.
His movements, initially languid and eerily soft, gradually progress to an expansive physicalising of freedom and fight.
After months of enforced lockdowns and restrictions, it seems shocking to watch someone dance so blithely, elegantly, lacking in any stress or anxiety.
And yet, despite Gallucci's energetic and sculpted presence, his surroundings remain bleakly vacant.
The setting, Newcastle's much-beloved Civic Theatre mainstage has barely seen a performance since March, and Newcastle's regular theatre-goers have taken to online platforms to satisfy their performance hunger.
Essentially, Gallucci's solitary dance provides us with more than a visual experience - it becomes a provocation to consider the great shifts in our community.
This is not an abstract implication. The measures taken in 2020 to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have wreaked havoc on many industries, locally, nationally, and internationally.
The drastic and seemingly perpetual hiatus of live performance has caused many to wonder if things will ever be the same again. Fully cancelled seasons, postponed gigs, and venue shutdowns have forced artists to take to social media to disseminate their creations to the world.
Yet, the formidable combination of local creative minds and resources to generate this compelling work hints at some light at the end of the tunnel: A way forward for theatre spaces to be used efficiently to tell stories and create exciting works for their audiences.
Gallucci, the subject of the film, grew up in Belmont training at the Lake Macquarie Dance Centre, then at Alegria Dance Studios in Sydney, and finally at the Royal Ballet School in London. He is now a company artist, living and working in London, and was thrilled to make the most of his return home during quarantine through working on this new piece.
"I loved working on this piece with Adam [Blanch] while I was home last month."
"It reunited me with the stage and reminded me to be optimistic of the future in such uncertain times."
The choreographer of the work Adam Blanch is a Newcastle native, having grown up attending the Hunter School of Performing Arts and Marie Walton Mahon Dance Academy, before embarking on a long professional dance career nationally and internationally. His years with Sydney Dance Company led him to begin exploring with choreographic movement, and just earlier this year he created a 20-minute work for Newcastle's Catapult Company.
This connection to Catapult, Newcastle's space for professional contemporary dance projects, facilitated the realisation of Ghostlight.
"When Adam proposed this work to me I was all too happy to make it happen," Catapult director Cadi McCarthy said. "I have a great relationship with the Civic Theatre, so I asked if we could be allowed into the theatre for the day to film this work and breathe some life back into the space."
"It's so important to keep creating despite the changes in the performance experience."
"Cadi is a force, she brought our ideas to life," Blanch said. "I loved every second of creating this work, and Ashley's gorgeous film direction really took it to the next level."
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As something of a clue of his choreographic intentions, Blanch offers just this short phrase in the film description:
"Expressive movement is perpetual.
Unconfined by enforced boundaries,
Creativity endures."
These words conjure up an image of resistance to the current state. A quiet energy, determined to persist with the expression of the human soul despite obstacles. And so too, do we see this in Gallucci's strong movement, juxtaposed with the bleak and ghostly space.
This piece combines multiple expressive mediums to create texture and depth - there is an internal dialogue, as well as an external process.
Ghostlight can be viewed as more than a dance film: it is a meditation on a changing world, playing with the duality of emotion and action, of light and dark, of futility and resistance in a way that has never been more vital.
You can watch Ghostlight on Catapult Dance's Facebook, Instagram, and Vimeo platforms:
