It Takes 2 – 7 Duelling Dances
Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst, Saturday, 5th April 2026
Producer: Form Dance Projects
Works (in order of review):
Gust-age Georgette Sofatzis-Xuereb
Backshore Daniel Navarro Lorenzo
Platinum Avalon Ormiston & Molly Haringsma
The Scale Suan Kim
Entertain Me Eliza Cooper
The Object Hugo Poulet & Taiga Kita Leong
Nancy Duet Phillip Adams & Geoffrey Watson
Review by Phaedra Brown
That’s Two Thank You is a festival of duets presented by Form Dance Projects for the second year running. DUELS marks the competition portion of this event, for one night only at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst. This year featured vastly different work from choreographers, both emerging and more established, from New South Wales and further afield. Each work explored the form of the duet in a different way, some partnerships interacting directly with each other, others were on more individual trajectories. All the works, there were 7 in total, spanned the possibilities a duet might take: working in unison, partnering, and a more formulaic my-turn-your-turn structure. As Form’s Creative Director Paul Selwyn Norton’s opening remarks mentioned, the evening certainly “celebrated an appetite” for the exploration, and with all works around the ten-minute mark it will be interesting to see where they, be they winners or not, develop in the future.
GUST-AGE
Choreographer: Georgette Sofatzis-Xuereb
Performers: Stella Mackenzie & Malachi Sylvester
GUST-AGE was the first work of the evening. An alluring exploration of air as a physical sensation, this work featured floor fans that surrounded the dancers on the edge of the stage, buffeting them into movement.
The work begins with one dancer upstage, feet planted, their arms flailing, torso bending, tossed around by gusts of air. The second dancer, downstage, stands steadfast, the wind in her hair. Each explore the variation in the air around them, finding where the wind hits their skin, hair, and clothing. Constantly searching for new stimulus, they seem to seek out pockets of warm, unmoving atmosphere with their extremities before being pushed in a different direction by the wind of the fans. The fans provide a real sensation that the dancers can search for in an indoor space that is stuffy and devoid of the natural ebbs and flows of air. With the dancers’ gaze directed inward, their search for the sensation of the wind is serious and introspective, but as their movements get larger in scale they find each other’s eyes and are drawn together.
Once they reach one another it is as if the wind suddenly stops. Locked in an embrace, the air is sucked is out of their breezy exploration—the feeling of another solid body tethering them into stillness. They begin a unison phrase, their movement strong, purposeful, as if they’re holding steadfast in a storm. This work showcases the strength of these two dancers as they create a lush palate of falling and catching, and sharpness that contrasts their initial breathiness. GUST-AGE is a corporeal yearning for the support that the air provides when in motion. As a duet it shows how a breeze can be some indication of another affecting body, human or planetary, passing by.
BACKSHORE
Choreographer: Daniel Navarro Lorenzo
Performers: Kate Arber & Tara Gilmour
This is the other work in this line up where I felt the choreography distinctly drew from sensation and landscape. Produced in collaboration with AUSTI Dance and Physical Theatre, Daniel Navarro Lorenzo’s choreography created a distinct environment in which the dancers, Kate Arber and Tara Gilmour, played.
A wide, shallow, silver bowl filled with water is carried on stage and placed on the floor in the centre of the stage. The performers sit either side and begin to ceremoniously drip water over their palms and heads. A sweet, plucky melody plays. Under the exposed heritage-listed dome of the Eternity Playhouse theatre, the light floral dresses they wear, and the water, give this work a sense of place: it has the feeling of a garden or greenhouse in spring—a setting from which the movement is drawn.
Circling the bowl and each other the dancers frolic like birds around a birdbath. Sweeping limbs, outstretched balances. Gazing out around the space, their eyes fresh and hopeful, discovering the world around them. They play a game, one trying to catch onto the other’s feet. There is an ominous change in music and the warm dusky lighting turns cold. The dancers manipulate each other, pulling and catching with moments of suspension. The movement is technical and balletic; with leg extensions, back bends, it has an ethereal quality. Facing each other they punch into the air next to the other’s head and chest before melting their arms back. This motif repeats again and again, like an embrace that never comes to fruition. There is a sense of a particular memory or place that the choreography is reacting toward. The work leaves me with a sense of a longing for freedom and play, and a heartbreak for lost games and rituals.
PLATINUM
Choreographer/performers: Avalon Ormiston & Molly Haringsma
This work takes us to a very different, alien world.
Avalon Ormiston and Molly Haringsma begin entangled under a mesh covered in platinum blonde hair. Together they make a blob that pulsates and crackles—a jumble of limbs, heads, and even more platinum blonde hair. To the sound of a thumping heartbeat, they emerge … writhing … dressed identically with black skirts, white collared shirts, and matching long, straight-haired, platinum blonde wigs. They’re two uncanny Barbie dolls, birthed of the alien hair-blob. These supernatural twins embrace, tenderly, their arms explore the air on either side of the other’s torso, jabbing and retracting like tentacles. As a poppy, catwalk song starts, they begin a robotic conversation, exploring how their bodies connect and come apart, like two halves of a whole, in and out of unison. As they dance together they are acutely aware of the other, but also self-aware of their appearance, constantly fixing their hair that is getting more and more unkempt.
In a strobe light there is a flash of a slow motion, hair pulling, fight scene. The light turns warm, the twins fix their hair.
In the second part of this duet, the performers produce two square mirrors, that, when leant up against their legs, cover from their feet up to around the knee. In the mirrors we see the twins in quadruple – two identical creatures reflected in two identical mirrors. Their bodies become segmented by the mirror, doubling and obscuring parts of their bodies. This creates a different jumble of limbs and hair, a flat puzzle rather than a blob. They hold up the mirrors to each other in a final merging of their bodies and personas. There is one final embrace. One twin exits as the other is left alone, pining.
THE SCALE
Choreographer: Suan Kim
Performers: Suan Kim & Sojung Bae
This work looks at the augmentation of the body in a more human way.
The lights come up on a small wire skeleton, standing on a plinth at the back of the stage. The stage goes dark and when re-illuminated, the statue is gone, but the dancers have entered. A laser light is placed on the floor. When its red light hits the feet of the dancers it looks as if they are dancing on a glowing red line. As they move, whatever part of the body touches the floor is illuminated or outlined by the red line. One dancer picks up the laser and shines it onto her body, the red line moving up and down. When it reaches her throat there is a moment of suffocation before she is released. The red light dissects their bodies: top from bottom, right from left, one arm, one leg, the head, scrutinised by the red line.
Facing, their arms cut across each other’s bodies, side to side, as if they are now dissecting each other. Here, and throughout the piece, their movement is intricate but broken up with the loosening of the body into trips and stumbles. The choreography is a mix of robotic and ragdoll. In one moment, they find the ground, collapsing, folding around each other, then just as quickly their limbs begin searching sharply, clinically along the ground. One dancer crumples to the floor while the other stands up on the plinth. With arms outstretched, she holds aloft two mannequin arms, duplicating the length of her own. She seems burdened by their weight for a moment before they become a true extension of her body, using them to reach further out into the space. In the final moment of the piece, as she drops her prosthetics; there is a sense of loss.
I think back to the wire skeleton at the start of the piece. Was this an aspirational symbol? A longing for a more efficiently designed type of body? Or perhaps it was a forewarning that the search for robotic perfection is more sinister than it seems.
ENTERTAIN ME
Choreographer: Eliza Cooper
Performers: Eliza Cooper & Xanthe Creighton
Another clever take on the relationship between humans and technology, ENTERTAIN ME looks at the consequences of and for dance that is increasingly viewed through our phones.
The two dancers, dressed in rhinestoned caps, long sleeved form-fitting tops and parachute pants, appear side by side. The first half of this piece is made up of dance that is classic Tik Tok. Sharp gestural bounces, bops, shuffles. A clawed hand shakes in front a gaping mouth. Nodding, teeth, tongue, and most of all an attitude of nonchalant playfulness that is a staple of viral Tik Tok dance trends – a weird mix of commercial Jazz or Hip Hop and a new, increasingly codified type of movement that is designed specifically to fit within the frame of a phone screen.
The performers mime taking a selfie and checking it, becoming so absorbed in their pretend phone screen that the rest of the work is performed with their faces into their palms where phones would be. Eliza Cooper and Xanthe Creighton perform a stepping pattern that increases with complexity. Running, skipping, shuffling, sharp changes in direction and even rolling to the floor, all with their faces glued to the would-be phone screen. This movement is underscored with an ominous drone. The performance is equally ominous. In stark contrast to the charisma of the first half of the work, the dancers are now vacant faced, not seeing each other or the world around them.
Given Cooper’s practice in Flamenco and other folk-dance styles, I begin to read their stepping pattern as a folk-dance. ENTERTAIN ME becomes a comment on the way that Tik Tok has become a place for community dance. However, witnessing the solitude of the dancers, it is devoid of real-life interaction, we are left to wonder what the consequences of this new, online, folk-dance might be.
THE OBJECT
Choreographer/Performers: Hugo Poulet & Taiga Kita Leong
Here we see a work that explores high-stakes physicality. The two dancers, dressed in black and dark grey jeans and hoodies emerge from one side of the stage. They cross right to left, then left to right. First slowly rolling and passing around each other, then in a broken walk, a run, then a strut. During one crossing a dancer falls into an outburst of tormented spirals, transitioning from floor to air in a series of whirling rolls and jumps. This repeats, and the other dancer has a similar break away from the crossing structure.
Next Hugo Poulet and Taiga Kita Leong circle each other, maintaining eye contact, getting closer, as if preparing to battle. They begin an exhibition of highly physical floorwork. An arhythmic phrase of rolling and falling. They remove their hoodies bookmarking a new section of the work.
In a flickering spotlight one dancer seems to power-down in broken fall to the floor. He lies breathing. The other performer attempts to lift him up one body part at a time. A leg is pulled up and it hovers in the air, then an arm, the head, the torso gets stuck in place so that the dancers is stacked from floor to standing. The dancer hovers momentarily on his own weight before he begins to slump again. Thus follows a phrase of falling and restacking, one desperately trying to make the other carry his own weight: carries, spins, catches mid-fall, a hoist of the ankle mid-roll.
In the final image of the piece the two are locked shoulder to shoulder, unsure who is supporting who.
NANCY DUET
Choreographer/Performers: Phillip Adams & Geoffrey Watson
This work stands alone in this line up for its maturity, brought to us by the individual and collective experience of Phillip Adams and Geoffrey Watson; a depth of research can be felt underneath the choreography of the NANCY DUET.
Adams and Geoffrey Watson enter the stage nude, with bandanas tied around their penises. My mind goes immediately to the Hanky Code (or ‘flagging’) : the use of bandanas to wordlessly communicate sexual preferences.
This minimal costuming places the work in a world of queerness, but also draws our attention to the way that bodies can so intimately connect to each other when moving together. NANCY DUET, of all the works in in this evening of DUELS, showcased the most finely tuned connection between the dueting partners. While the performers rarely looked at each other, they moved through their journey together with a deep, intuitive sense of where the other body had been and was going to be.
The performers stand side by side, heads turned towards the right, and pause. An emotional, tender piano underscores this initial moment and the piece that follows. The music is spacious with ebbs and flows. It beautifully compliments the poignant spaciousness also present within the choreography.
Adams and Watson walk to a new place on stage and lay, practically, down onto the floor, torsos raised and hands gesturing, caressing the air. They cross the space again, face down the diagonal holding hands aloft, their fingers barely touch in a moment of fragile connection. They walk and face toward the back, they gesture to the sky.
The choreography plays out as the performers repeatedly walk across the stage to arrive in postures like these. Simple but definitive gestures; sometimes statuesque, always with a precise attention to the hands and the gaze. It feels as though they are simultaneously the statues they see and visitors to the gallery they occupy. There is a reverence for the pathway taken to arrive and it feels as though they are revisiting these postures as artefacts. In turn they are allowing us, the audience, to be privy to important, pinpointed moments in time. Sometimes from their walk they fall into precise and unembellished movement sequences: a balletic plié that ends apologetically when the dancers drop their shoulders and walk away; a fluffing of hands in front of the chest; a spin out of nowhere across the stage; lying down facing the sky with a rock side to side, tossing as if wrapped in a bedsheet. In the soundtrack, intimate calls of pleasure can be heard, just over the swelling piano. The tenderness in this duet made it my piece of the night.
WINNERS & LOSERS?
At the conclusion of the evening the overall winner of DUELS would be announced, but we were also asked to vote for the audience choice award. Looking at my choices I couldn’t help but feel that each of the performances was so distinct, each drawn from such a different place of experience, style and purpose, that there couldn’t possibly any uniform criteria on which to judge each work other than personal preference.
In the end THE SCALE by Suan Kim was the overall winner and GUST-AGE by Georgette Sofatzis Xuereb took the audience choice award.
This kind of competitive process has been part of the dance landscape before— from the Keir Choreographic Awards, which ran for 10 years and is celebrated in the book Competing Choreographies, to TV franchise So You Think You Can Dance. But while this evening was framed as a competition, there seemed to be a real sense of camaraderie between performers on stage when the awards were announced. From the buzz in the foyer when the audience was given the opportunity to think about and discuss why we liked what we liked, the sense of community was also palpable. I got the sense that the real joy of the night was not who won or didn’t win, but the opportunity to watch performance; to see all these new works and wonder what might be next for them all.
DUELS
Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst, Saturday, 5th April 2026
Choreographers
Georgette Sofatzis-Xuereb Gust-age
Daniel Navarro Lorenzo Backshore
Avalon Ormiston & Molly Haringsma Platinum
Suan Kim The Scale
Eliza Cooper Entertain Me
Hugo Poulet & Taiga Kita Leong The Object
Phillip Adams & Geoffrey Watson Nancy Duet
Lighting Designer: Theodore Carroll
Lighting Operator: Marissa Argyris
Producing Organisation: FORM Dance Projects
Producer: Tobiah Booth-Remmers
Creative Director (FORM) Paul Selwyn Norton
Phaedra Brown is an independent dancer, choreographer, and producer. Her current practice draws on a collage of elements from movement, choreography, writing, and curation.