Thu 15 Jan: Mia Segal, Greta Gauhe and Deborah DiMeglio, and Hui-Hsin Lu

This image is divided into three parts. On the left, two people are embracing, with one suspended above and hanging downward, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, while the other stands below, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. In the centre, two people wearing all-white attire kneel closely together, one partly atop the other, looking sideways, on a rectangular white drape marked with abstract multicoloured lines. On the right, a blurred photo shows a group in uniform grey dresses standing in formation with their backs to the audience, arms raised overhead, while one figure stands off to the right, set apart with arms resting by her sides.

News Story

Mia Segal A Human Touch

Greta Gauhe and Deborah DiMeglio Collapsing Into The Equilibrium Line

Hui-Hsin Lu Follow Me!!






Olivia Wachowiak

Follow Me displays the trappings of a Baroque costume drama as three women rehearse elegant, balletic court dances, accompanied by a live quartet of professional musicians, plus a singer (James Shing Mu Cheng). However, despite the façade of etiquette and sophistication, the subtext is different: one of the women annoys her partner by endlessly falling over, a third dancer feels left out, makes faces off stage, then seeks company with the violinist. Soon discord, tiffs and romping chaos erupt. Choreographer Hui-Hsin Lu effectively weaves clowning with spirited pedestrian movements to create a light, entertaining interdisciplinary work that highlights the multifaceted talents of the dancers.

How long can you watch a couple enact an intimate embrace before feeling uncomfortable or touched? Dancers Amanda Pang and Caitlin Macleod linger long in such a position, cherishing the physical and emotional experience of holding and being held. They lean in and yield to each other; heads touch, cheeks graze, arms grip around torsos and gradually the couple melt into the floor. They establish trust and acts of surrender that continue in an impressively coordinated, weight-sharing Contact duet, where the pair balance, fall, catch and surf across their bodies’ surfaces. While their performance is risky and energetic, the powerful connection they maintain pays testament to choreographer Mia Segal’s searching questions around humanity and touch.

To finish, choreographer Greta Gauhe and visual artist Deborah DiMeglio explore the devasting reality of melting glaciers. These big dense bodies of ice are depicted as piles of large stiff sheets of crumpled white and pale blue paper into which the performers immerse themselves. The women wrap themselves up in the folds of the paper, collapse onto it or balance the engulfing sheets on their heads. At one point they engage in a duet of harsh pushing and resisting, their jaws clenched in effort. In another moment, they tussle with the paper, scrunching and ripping with the aim of destruction. Doomfully, the sound of dripping water and alarming news flashes accompanies their endeavours. Gauhe and DiMeglio’s moving embodiment of the glacier’s struggle for survival, before its watery collapse, is creative, topical and visually striking.


Jo Leask

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