CRAFTING COLLABORATION

Campbelltown Arts Centre, 7 November, 2025

Choreographer/Performers: Martin del Amo, Sue Healey, Tra Mi Dinh, Mitchell Christie

MSTM is a collaborative creation between four artists: Martin del Amo, Sue Healey, Tra Mi Dinh and Mitchell Christie. This work asked questions. “What happens when four distinct dance artists create a work from scratch, each moving fluidly between the roles of choreographer and performer? How do they retain their individuality while forging a collective presence?” All performers contributed equally as choreographers and performers and their challenge was to convey to an audience the process and mode of the exchange of knowledge between them. During the process of development they were intent on making space for their individual ways of working and to foster the practice of non-hierarchical teamwork. To quote the programme notes:

In the current cultural climate, opportunities for independent dance artists to develop and present new work are increasingly rare. Against this backdrop Campbelltown Arts Centre’s extraordinary invitation almost sounded too good to be true: four dance artists from different generations and distinct practices creating a full-length work together from scratch. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity.

From the outset, the project felt both radical and expansive. It offered us a non-hierarchical space to exchange, transmit, and share authorship. Spread across three intensive development periods within a single year, we were able to keep the momentum alive while allowing ideas to mature — a rare luxury in the fast-paced and often fragmented world of independent practice.

This work achieved all of the above, and throughout we experienced the product of this generous collaboration. As audience we came to understand the similarities and differences between the performers, but saw both celebrated. Martin del Amo, Sue Healey, Tra Mi Dinh, Mitchell Christie are refined performers in their own right, but I was stuck by the way they were able to not only capture the essence of their own movement, but the way they were able to search for the essence of each other’s.

This was a unique and very special work of choreography. It took a simple idea – to collaborate – and turned it into a show that was crafted with complexity and performed with sense of play and discovery.

To begin we were taken on an unusual journey into the theatre at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Heading outside into the garden surrounded courtyard we were ushered into a small holding room and met there with multiple screens and the four performers.

Martin, on one side of the room, was continuously re-arranging four square boards showing the letters M, S, T and M, the first initial of each performer and the name of the work. He changes one letter out for another and gives us a glimpse of what was to come– all the combinations and relationships these four performers had to play with. Tucked into the opposite corner of the room Sue was manoeuvring a projector which she shone onto Mitchell and Tra Mi, superimposing close-up footage of their filmed bodies onto their real moving bodies. Two large rectangles, side by side on the wall above us, featured whole body footage, the performers traversing both screens—walking, falling, running, and dancing in and out of view. It was as if they were chasing each other across frames.

We were then ushered onto the stage, passing Martin who was grinning ear to ear, welcoming everyone to the world of MSTM. We paused backstage for a moment behind curtains, in a holding state of anticipation for what was to come, before the curtain opened and we all walked across the stage and to our seats.

Once seated, we find Mitchell downstage in a slow, controlled rotation, forming and retracting from shapes, guiding the air around him with his hands. He is soon joined by Martin, and in the same state they cross arms and bodies, navigating their intersecting pathways hands-first. As they shift to the centre of the stage Tra Mi and Sue circle them with contrasting movement that is sharper and faster, but just as precise. The four join into one group for just a second before swapping partners. Two split off and re-join, then a different pair break out of the group. Then they are all together for a second, before the group continues to split in choreography that fractures almost as soon as it unifies. They leave and arrive in and out of poses – gestures referring to each other and the space around them but elongated through the arms to become choreographic. Each performer begins to flow in their own timing. The essence of the movement becomes their own and they each begin to find an individual trajectory. Poses meld together into a phrase of movement. Strict detail is lost as the speed increases.

The flow between duet, quartet and solo, unison, near unison and opposition gives a cyclical, methodical feeling. This beginning section of the work spends time highlighting what seem to be all the combinations and links that can be drawn between the four performers. Satisfyingly, we then see these relationships play out in the solos and duets that follow, which are interspersed throughout the work.

In a well-oiled duet, seen previously in development for Tra Mi’s 2022 work, And, Again, part of DirtyFeet’s Out of the Studio 2022, this revisited combination between Tra Mi and Mitchell brings us intricate isolations with a gentle tone. They move in and out of sync with expertly coordinated moments of throw and weight shift. They are on top of the movement and perform together with the same mix of calmness and confidence I remember from And, Again.

Sue and Martin performed a duet together that was full of joy and ease. They file around each other, feet shifting in a kind of game: a danced conversation about space, rebounding with cheeky interruption. This section inspired a sense of comfort and relief, the kind to be found when two people speak the same language, or at least dialects of the same, to each other and with us in their audience.

The sections continue. Duets, solos and group moments arise – each unique and exciting but melding effortlessly together to create the unified collage that is this work.

The curtains close behind Martin, posing regally in a spotlight. A solo follows that is masterfully and unequivocally del Amo. He moves from position to position at increasing speed. His body pulling in many directions, interjected with shakes and shudders. His feet shift calmly beneath his energetic body. At the conclusion of his solo he turns to walk back through the curtain, but only to find that he can’t find the gap, and must search all the way to the side wall in order to finally duck backstage – the performer caught out—a classic trope—and a classic demonstration of Martin’s personal brand of tongue-in-cheek action and his innate sense of theatrical timing.

We later see two duets arise at the same time, one between Martin and Tra Mi, and the other between Mitchell and Sue. Together Martin and Tra Mi have an intensity and focus to their performance. Poised and precise they move close together inspecting each other and the world around them. Mitchell and Sue’s duet gives us the most graceful exploration of being off centre. Their long spines sway and tip. I feel like I can see the air buoying and catching them in their suspension. These combined duets create a poignant moment, showing that their process of collaborative making, the weeks they spent together, revealed common ground between them. They seem to have been able to pinpoint shared essences or movement qualities in a way that feels visceral and energetic, rather than something that had been discussed and decided upon.

Tra Mi performs a solo in, what is rapidly becoming through her growing body of work, her signature style. She bounces between soft and sharp, precise and melting, mechanical and tender. Tra Mi is an incredibly human performer, able to move through many textures with a sense of practicality and without losing her personal body language. During her solo the others watch. In fact, throughout the piece, the four performers really get to see each other, and in this moment it’s as if they’re reading each other’s movement. Sue begins a version of Tra Mi’s choreography, in her own style, then Mitch and Martin do the same, translating Tra Mi’s movement onto their own bodies in real time. This time the choreography reveals a process that has pinpointed each performer’s sense of individuality and allowed us to see each of their distinctive approaches to movement creation.

The major innovation of this work is its use of all the spaces available, with the choreography inhabiting all of the theatre’s corners and crannies. The performers made the theatre their own in a clever display of interaction, not only with backstage, but with the periphery of the room. The choreography played with perspective, using the foreground and background of the stage simultaneously. The walls were used to hang off, hang out on, be stuck up against; the back wall in particular serving as a home-base. At one point we find the four performers nestled into a far corner. Lighting designer Frankie Clarke skilfully tucked them into a square of light, up against a wall, creating a smaller room within the large room of the theatre. Like four flat mates living in close proximity, Mitchell, Sue, Tra Mi and Martin shift around each other. It’s like we’d stumbled upon an awkward conversation about shared space.

The white backdrop and black curtains that ran along the back wall, as well as a second set of curtains halfway down the stage, were also used to frame and change the space, create exciting transitions and disappearances, or even being used at times by the performers to disrupt their collaborators. The black curtains became sometimes asymmetrical or very narrow, sometimes moving swiftly, and interrupting, nudging, cutting off, and manufacturing focus to grab our attention. This was true in one of Sue’s solos in which she plays with perspective, making her way along the back white wall, pausing in the centre, with the back curtains closing in and framing her from either side. It seems like they’re after her, but just as she’s about to be engulfed, she springs off the back wall and the centre curtains rush in placing her in just a narrow rectangle. Tra Mi and Mitchell walk forward, powerful and ready for action … that is until Mitchell’s trajectory is promptly cut off by a rogue curtain leaving Tra Mi to fend for herself. At another point the performers pass between the narrowed curtains. As one exits from view another takes their place. Like magic, they transform into each other. Suddenly we see only Sue’s feet on the floor, the rest of her concealed behind a curtain. She’s dragged back out of sight and we are left to imagine Martin, Mitchell and Tra Mi conspiring behind the curtain about where to hide her body.

At all times, the character of each performer in MSTM remains present, even when they aren’t on stage, and this is often done via the animation of the curtains. I always felt aware of them all and had a palpable sense of their behind-the-scenes machinations.

The use of the curtains also placed an emphasis on framing that carried the filmic images from the work’s introduction into the theatre space and was wonderfully telling of Sue’s rich career in dance film. There was an importance placed on what was seen or hidden in the framing of theatre’s architecture, the bodies, and the relationships between everything present and hidden on the stage. At every point our attention was directed, and this made the work feel seamless.

The concluding section of MSTM was a walking and weaving pattern with Martin, Sue, Tra Mi and Mitchell striding the stage all together. As they pass each other they smile. This was a fun negotiation, and a joy to witness as the curtain closes on their party.

Again and again in this work we have seen the joy in spatial conversation and collaborative negotiation. The performers seem to have a genuine interest in each other and in the cause of collaboration as the purpose of this work. Together they have created a work that feels momentous in its representation of intergenerational wisdom and in its love and care for the craft of choreography.

MSTM

Campbelltown Arts Centre, 6-8 November, 2025

Choreographer/Performers:

Lighting Designer: Frankie Clarke

Sound Design: Gail Priest

Costume Designer: Aleisa Jelbart

Production Manager: Alejandro Rolandi

Operator: Darcy Catto-Pitkin