September 4, 2024
It’s 10pm and I am mildly anxious about going to sleep. I’m in a strange hotel bed, I’m overtired after a full day of exploring PUNQ’s myriad art installations, and I have to get up at 5am. PUNQ is a biennial festival in North Queensland that seeks to redefine place through art: offering unique cultural experiences by immersing audiences in the region’s diverse landscapes.
So, why do I need to wake up at 5am?
To see, or should I say experience, Still: a site and time-specific work conceived by Dancenorth Artistic Director Kyle Page. Still reunites Dancenorth with Canadian composer Jessica Moss and regular Dancenorth collaborators Liminal Spaces to create a work that interweaves music, architecture, and the natural miracle of the sunrise. Jessica Moss has worked with Dancenorth before on the critically acclaimed Dust where she played violin live while interacting with dancers who in turn interacted with and deconstructed a wall created by Liminal Spaces.
For audiences, the experience starts the evening before the morning show, changing your sleep patterns in order to make it to the early timeslot. “Will I get to sleep? Will I wake up in time? How will I sleep?” crash through my brain, disturbing the silence, inhabiting my body, breaking the stillness.
I meditate. I focus on my breath and find the stillness I require to fall asleep.
The alarm goes off.
My partner and I rise and start our morning rituals. But there is a new time pressure. The languid motions of my pre-dawn body are overwritten by the stress of having so little time to get to the event. After my shower and half-way through dressing, I wonder whether this anxiety has made me more efficient.
After a few snarky comments, fighting time and trying not to fight each other, we arrive at our destination near beach exit 8 on Rose Bay. There, facing the bay, is a box-like structure where a queue of sleepy audience members congregate. Rather than the usual buzz of excitement before a show this crowd stands in reverent silence waiting for their moment to enter the chamber. The doors open and we silently enter, taking our place on a large bench seat. This is a contained box with four solid walls and no windows. The door closes and we are thrust into darkness. My eyes search in vain for something: a shape, a form . . .
The music begins with a rumble. It’s more of a soundscape with flickers of musicality. In the darkness of Still, there are no dancers, and no musician, just a quiet sound. But then the wall moves, opening to reveal a sliver of the night sky.
From this moment it is clear that the sun—and its slow and gentle revelation—is the dancer we have come to see. The placement of Still’s pavilion allows us to see the intense clockwork rhythm of the sun’s rise. Its performance is a gentle revelation of colour and space across time. When the sun first breaches the horizon, the world glows red, then the dark sky slowly transitions into mauve, yellow, and finally vibrant blue. The sun’s upward movement also awakens life: bugs are followed by birds. Next is the early movements of human bodies and machines: the Magnetic Island Ferry makes its first trip across the bay and as the sky turns yellow the first plane flies ominously close to us landing on the runway behind us.
At key moments of the sun’s movement, the wall opens further, progressively transforming a closed box into an open pavilion. The work’s music, however, is more subtle than the architecture in its changes, calling us to notice slighter shifts in light and life. The music is pre-recorded. Consequently it becomes clear that the music is an intricate study of the sunrise, and moreover that this seemingly mystical natural phenomena has a linear and logical timeline to which music can be composed.
Throughout Still, the music’s changes sometimes brought the listener closer to shifts in the environment, and sometimes created a distraction that one fought against to focus on the sunrise.
Was this tension deliberate?
My inclination was to immerse myself in the slow dance of nature before me, so, when the music challenged this immersion I ignored it. However when the sun crept over the horizon to finally reveal itself, the music swelled and the majesty of our conductor’s work burst within me. At that moment, I felt an ache in my heart, a joy that felt like suffering, an appreciation of life so palpable it brought a tear to my eye.
Did I need this experience to witness the sunrise? No. But Still created a space for the disciplined study of our world; requiring you to be in the moment. I—so easily distracted—appreciated this chance to remember what it is like to be present, and to feel part of the mystical reality of nature.
Lucien Simon is an award winning filmmaker, theatre maker and community artist who is currently the Creative Director of Cairns Festival, Cairns Children’s Festival and Understory Film Festival. Lucien lives and works in the stunning, creative and ever surprising Gimuy country.
