HIGH OCTANE: A RELENTLESS PUSH TO THE START LINE
Campbelltown Arts Centre, 28th March, 2025
Emma Harrison: director and performer with performer/collaborators Emma Riches & Frances Orlina
review by Phaedra Brown
Racing helmets, leaf-blowers, and smoke machines galore—Emma Harrison’s High Octane melds evocative staging and seamlessly executed choreography to explore our experience of competition, success and above all, resilience. It’s a work that pushes relentlessly forward but takes the audience along for the ride.
Entering Campbelltown Arts Centre we were met with remnants of last night’s burnout on the forecourt. Others have told me it was pretty spectacular, a shame to have missed the wheel spinning, tire squealing, smoky display of rev-head action on the 2nd and 3rd nights of this characteristically short contemporary dance season. But when we entered the foyer our compensation was the sound of formula one racing commentary playing over a loudspeaker, setting up the world of High Octane before we even got to the performance space, a fun detail.
As we enter the black box theatre the stage is doused in smoke. The dancers are amping themselves up. Models, drivers, rock-stars and wrestlers, they shift hazily between modes of competition, celebrity and stardom. Dressed in Eliza Cooper’s fitting mix of Lycra and leather, the three performers—Emma Harrison, Emma Riches and Frances Orlina—look great in cropped racing jackets over form fitting body suits, with motorbike helmets which they use as head coverings, podiums, shields and trophies throughout the work.
Emma Harrison’s choreography alternates between big, jazzy, rhythmic sequences, and oozy, curling slow-motion sections. There are major unison sections which are interjected with each of the dancers, at different moments, taking the lead or trailing the pack, keeping the cycle of ‘leader’ or ‘winner’ rotating between the three. This piqued my interest over and over again as I was always wondering who would rise to the top next.
With High Octane, as with her solo work Wolverine in 2024 (Sydney Festival), Emma Harrison has created seamless transitions between movement and text, crafting stories that complement the movement without being overly explanatory. With High Octane we hear monologues from Frances Orlina about her lust for stardom delivered while balancing precariously atop her racing helmet. From Harrison we get a frenzied take on a regional dance Eisteddfod, a call-back to her childhood. And in a section steeped in early 2000s nostalgia, Emma Riches excitedly recites a series of numbers, the numerical patterns of texts delivered via an early mobile keypad to a high-school boyfriend. Her quick, neat, detailed movement transforms into a series of proud poses. She has it all: mobile phone, love, and the promise of a bright future. She’s the top of the high-school food chain. Riches is impressive with in her precise mix of voice and movement, expertly toeing a line between the earnest and the satirical.
The props and other production elements of High Octane are impressive as well. A leaf blower becomes a wind machine that’s so forceful it distorts the dancers’ faces; motorbike helmets are symbols of strength, success and power, paraded around the stage, held high as if a conqueror is offering up enemy heads. A pile of ash rests in the back corner for the duration of the work, a fourth, vanquished competitor.
The neon greens, pinks and reds, with the re-occurring use of spotlights in Benjamin Brockman’s lighting design both expose the dancers and transform them into icons. The electronic sound design by Amy Flannery drives the dancers forward, inspiring and matching their persistence. The cleverly integrated sounds of a racetrack or a dial tone help build the world of the show.
Sound is a rich element in all aspects of this work. After a helmet clad headbutting battle, Riches is left defeated. She begins to wail. Harrison then Orlina join, their cries unexpectedly transforming into the sound of cars revving—an inspired moment. The performers’ voices become tires screeching, sirens blaring, a harrowing soundscape. The dancers disappear and reappear, in and out of smoke, as they struggle to press towards the front corner of the stage, making ground and then being pulled back into the fog. Harrison delivers a balletic yet very rock-and-roll solo. There are victory laps, purposeful posing from the others, first place eisteddfod solos and those earlier wrestlers and rock-stars return. Through intense strobing light the movement echoes the start of the work, this time with more attack and clarity, the dancers now mid-competition.
Finally, Emma, Emma and Frances collapse into their separate spotlights, alongside the pile of ashes. A sense of aftershock settles across the stage. Emma Harrison begins to sing, rallying herself and the others. They begin a broken resurrection. Their bodies rising and collapsing. A jagged and broken roll begins over to the pile of ashes. Grabbing, hoarding, and pulling the ash with their arms, legs and bellies, they spread it out across the white stage. The ash becomes asphalt as the dancers mark out a large oval, a racetrack; their bodies struggling to pave the track and out of the ashes a new start line emerges.
Emma Harrison, Emma Riches and Frances Orlina are a well-oiled machine in High Octane, a work that never quite breaks down or reaches its limit. At times we see exhaustion built into the movement, but we never fear that they will fail or push past the point of no return. The work never becomes so high octane that the movement itself is unsustainable, but it does point to a relentless need for all of us to be ‘on’. The competition is not a fight to the death, but a fight to stay in motion—to do it all and ‘have it all’.
The team behind High Octane have created a work with access points for all audiences. Harrison, Riches, Orlina, Brockman, Flannery, and Cooper have produced a great example of how production and performance can work together to create an engaging piece of contemporary dance—a form often accused of being inaccessible. As Harrison explains, High Octane “is garish and loud, it moves fast and doesn’t wait for you to catch up”, but I never felt left behind. In a work that required model-like poise, gritty floorwork and nuanced characterisation, the versatility and staying power of all the performers is to be applauded; as are the team at Campbelltown Arts Centre who continue to champion and present high-quality, independent, contemporary dance work in Sydney.
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HIGH OCTANE
Campbelltown Arts Centre, March 27-29, 2025
Director and Performer: Emma Harrison
Performer and Collaborator: Emma Riches
Performer and Collaborator: Frances Orlina
Lighting Designer: Benjamin Brockman
Sound Designer: Amy Flannery
Costume Designer: Eliza Cooper
Dramaturg: Adriane Daff
Outside Eye: Martin del Amo and Miranda Wheen
Understudy: Cassidy McDermott Smith
Production Manager: Jessica Pizzinga
Operator: Darcy Catto-Pitkin
Creative Producer: Anthea Doropoulos
Assistant Creative Producer: Anne Cutajar
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Phaedra Brown is an independent dancer, choreographer, and producer. Her current practice draws on a collage of elements from movement, choreography, writing, and curation.