The Double-dipper.

{No longer undetected.}


{The Menton Glide.}


{All still beyond the gate.}


{Idleness and Happiness hand-in-hand do go.}

Seeing something a second time, one sees, naturally, different things. Rereading a novel, revisiting an artwork, re-watching a film, the second or third or fourth time around things can only look fantastically different. (Though, in fairness, save for study, rereading a novel, this is something I have not done, so can only presume. For myself, at present I like to leave favourite books where I left them.) A light is shone on something different and you come to it with new eyes, I guess. Some revisits or double dips can find you before something becoming increasingly familiar or perhaps transforming-ly less so.

A second look at the Icons triple bill, and I found it even more staggering, bold, and all-round awe-inspiring. (I was lucky enough to see Icons presented by The Australian Ballet twice at the State Theatre. Once, on opening night, and a second time with my Mum, as is our regular pattern. You’ll find us in row H.) For Glen Tetley’s Gemini I saw the same cast perform (Lana Jones, Adam Bull, Amber Scott, and Rudy Hawkes), and I loved seeing the four dancers throw everything at it. A work made for the four of them, it seemed to me, and who could ask to achieve better than a perfect fit? (Gemini was commissioned for The Australian Ballet's 1973 season.) I also saw the same cast perform Graeme Murphy’s Beyond Twelve, and I loved its humour and charm all the more this time around, with its goal post that gives way to a barre to a revealing arousal. So, too, I loved it’s filmic references and replication of footy team photos. I saw Robert Helpmann’s The Display with a different cast (with Madeleine Eastoe as The Female on opening night, and Rachel Rawlins on the Tuesday night), and I found this ballet had become darker to me, this second time in Nolan’s disquieting forest. Perhaps it was because I was seeing it with my Mum for her first time. During interval, we quietly chortled reading in the programme the interpretation of another; “the wife of one official guest was convinced the chivalrous lyrebird had returned to save the girl from a bush fire.”

Since then, I have seen Move to Move (Nederlands Dans Theater captured live in HD) one quiet Spring Sunday at the Cinema Nova, but for that you’ll have to wait. Replete with its Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) filmic “statements”, energy, and thoughtfulness, I am enjoying my September with its dance-heavy tilt.


{Nederlands Dans Theater: Move to Move}

+ Thank-you for all the Birthday cheer and affection. Thank-you for your hand-coloured forests and well wishes. Dear ones, you made the day all the more brilliant. Ah, yes, 37, she is going to be a great, great year. I'm sure of it. Utterly so. From caffeinated sweet bite at Little King to fuel gaming muscle spent at ACMI's Game Masters, capped off by a Chinese feast and a fast walk home before the rain, the day was a swell one. As were those either side, I ought add. So thank-you all for the Birthday cheer offered here High Up, and here and here. I'd offer you a slice or a sup of something if only there was not this screen between us.