See You
 ★★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. Hung Dance, Lewis Major. AC Arts Main Theatre. 24 Feb 2023

We say ‘see you’ as we leave someone or group we’ve spent time with until the next meeting. One day they are gone.

Pain of loss. Seeing, seeking, searching in hope and never finding the elusive lost one after the moment. Trying to forget. Such a profoundly painful life paradox.

Choreographer Lai Hung-Chung tackles this deepest mystery of human frailty utilising simultaneously fluid, shimmering movement and taut, jerking, sharp, jittering angles sprung from every body joint. Detail is extraordinarily focused, to very precise movement of hands and finger joints. The pain those jerking moments evoke is vivid.

A series of tableaux and duos evoke the deeply spiritual, emotional and raw mortal pain of loss, its guilt riven psychology ripples through the hour, building a physicalised sense of an inner other world from which escape is sought, but never achieved.

Its power is greatly increased by Tsai Chao-Yu’s exquisitely subtle lighting which works in a tremendously effective relationship with the dancers and Hsu Chau-Wai’s elegant electronic, at times elegiac score of which the chief undertone is the sound of bells, always reminding us emotional and physical loss is near. It is unceasing in its brutal assault on the soul.

See You is a magnificent, deeply powerful meditative work. Lai Hung-Chung’s contribution to contemporary dance in this work is outstanding in offering a new approach delving into the inner world of human experience.

David O’Brien

When: 22 Feb to 5 Mar

Where: AC Arts Main Theatre

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au