The art of duet
Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst, 10th April 2026
Producer: Form Dance Projects
Works in order of review
Merge Anastasios Repousi (Bboy Taz)
Please… continue? Remy Rochester & Angus Onley
Push and Pull Lai Hung-Chung, Hung Dance
Review by Lexy Panetta
FORM Dance Projects’ That’s Two, Thank You returned in 2026 for another celebration of duets, presented at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst. The triple bill brought together three pairs, creating three different worlds, by local and international choreographers.
FORM describes this event as “gladiatorial, playful and poetic” and the program made a compelling case for what two bodies in conversation can hold: the intimate and the epic, the comic and the melancholy, with a fusion of street dance and contemporary performance. That’s Two, Thank You was a reminder that partnering and creative collaboration, in all genres of dance, remains an engaging way to tell stories and explore creativity.
Merge
Choreographer: Anastasios Repousi
Performers: Naethiel ‘Tango’ Lumbera and Akuma Diva
We are gathered in the lobby; everyone mingling to the soft hum of foyer chatter as a dancer enters carrying a large speaker. He squeezes past people in the crowd, leaning in to plug his phone into a power outlet behind me. The audience starts to gather something is about to happen. We read the format and organise ourselves around Naethiel ‘Tango’ Lumbera. The music starts, it’s a punchy beat.
Lumbera begins. He spirals and propels himself in holds and upside-down balances engaging the speaker in an embrace. He moves fluidly through transitions and produces a whirl up of energy and propulsion. His style is sleek and his transitions flawless, fusing seamlessly from spectacular stationary balances into pedestrian moves which bring him back to be just one of the crowd. He has an engaging, vibrant personality, occasionally slipping us playful expressions. I am certainly no expert in defining the elements of this street fusion style, but watching Lumera moving is joyous and hypnotic, he delivers an energy to the crowd. His was a skilful way to bridge the theatre space and the street space, shifting the predictable norms of the pre-show foyer. It brought the audience to-the-party and set the tone for a warm and inviting energy that sustained throughout this evening of duets. Elements of Eternity Theatre’s own style—the polished concrete, mid-lobby staircase, and urban aesthetic layered onto the building's original 130 year old heritage character—worked well, making this blend of street and theatre feel authentic.
Like a pied piper Naethiel ‘Tango’ Lumbera led us up the stairs and through to the theatre. We jostled behind him to catch a glimpse of his smooth grove, eventually taking our seats. It crossed my mind that perhaps this was the duet, Lumera and us as we choreographed ourselves around him.
We were then met with a second dancer, voguing and waacking. The other half of Merge came into view: Akuma Diva. Diva began an RSVP, manifested in a highly stylised Voguing set. Sleek flicks of wrists and whirling arms paired with a charming sass as Lumera worked the space and the audience to various pop references and disco mash-ups such as Gloria Gaynor’s iconic ‘I Will Survive’. Like a call and response at Darling Square (where dancers gather to show off moves and share in the improvising awe of voguing and breaking), Merge attempted to scale the walls of a more formal space. Here a circular dance battle context, typically done in public spaces and in group settings for collective encouragement and sharing, brought responsive play into the theatre space where what seemed like two disconnected solos became a dance off; each performer continuing to build highly stylised mime, pantomime and funk—a playful mash-up that pulled in the audience, eventually inviting spectators onto the stage to engage in their own pop-culture party.
I enjoyed how Merge not only brought the dancers respective disciplines to this short work, but also got the audience engaged, showing off how dance can be enigmatic and joyous when shared.
Please… continue?
Choreographer/Performers: Remy Rochester & Angus Onley
I am familiar with the work of these artists, having written about Please Continue…? in 2025 for Catapult’s Outbound at the young and emerging performance hub PACT in Erskineville. Remy Rochester and Angus Onley had further developed and remounted the work for the Adelaide Fringe earlier this year. From the outset, as this Eternity outing, I noticed subtle changes from my first viewing. The most notable was the opening—the dancers were sitting in the audience before their work began. This was a fun transition as the audience was still buzzing and chatting about the playful elements of Merge. We were still catching our breath after being corralled up onto the stage as part of the battle. Rochester and Onley were disguised by their animated conversations with other audience members, until the lights caught them, drawing them up onto the stage to begin their work.
Please…continue? had the same energy and efficiency that I had previously noted in its partner work. Rochester and Onsley shift their bodies subtly and dramatically in and through each other. The work feels completely organic, a shared experience between the two performers. Their partnering exudes skill and clarity, they impressively flip and mould each other, acrobats leaving no gaps in their transitions, actors maintaining the consistency of their storytelling.
The added intricacies of the spatial orientation were well suited to the Eternity Playhouse stage that is anchored by a curved architectural recess at the centre rear of the space and with doors set symmetrically either side of the central feature (the layout and architecture offering a quiet historical resonance of the original church space). This was perfect for the work’s impromptu exits and entrances. The space seamlessly facilitated Rochester and Onsley’s hilarious use of the doors as they continually fling themselves in and out of the space, ultimately to miss each other. But the architecture also supported the way the dancers evoked something dark and uncertain, shifting their engagement with each other into something lonely and melancholic. Gestures of avoidance and connection, with hints of magnetism and revulsion, thread through the physical theatre-ly-ness of this work. The dancers’ interplay reveals a full spectrum of connection: they are alert and fearful, full of recognisable habitual behaviours and well-practised avoidances, building to a crescendo with a sophisticated sense of timing. The duet has emotional intensity, punctuated as it is by moments of humorous release and goofiness as Rochester and Onsley mimic conversations we all recognise, their romantic momentum quietly and inevitably building and collapsing. Whether the relationship is real, imagined, or somewhere in between, Rochester and Onsley navigate its chemistry, awkwardness, resistance and possibilities with remarkable fluency; getting closer, shifting each other's weight, swinging one another through the space to the excitable and chaotic score of Caravan by John Wasson.
It was a joy to see how far this work has come and the ease and fluency the performers have with each other on stage.
Push and Pull Hung Dance (Taiwan / RIDCC)
Choreographer: Lai Hung-Chung
Performers: Wu Shin-Jie and Lee Kuan-Ling
This is the first time I have seen the work of Hung Dance live. I had seen snippets on Instagram when reading about this award-winning work which was previously present at the Rotterdam International Duet Choreography Competition (RIDCC), so I came with the expectation that I might be impressed. Push and Pull certainly lived up to the group’s social media inspired hype. It was spellbinding, mesmerising and tender, a display of abstraction and sensitivity between two performers who are ultimately celebrating physicality.
These dancers have intense skill. Their relationship in this work began with an artificial detachment, as one dancer lay limp in the centre of the stage whilst the other circled, pulling and manipulating the reclining dancer’s arms as though she could not feel. I felt the audience mumble and wince as the male dancer lifted the female out of her folded shape and spun her, holding on to only her wrist. These were physically dislocating movements, and the risk of each manoeuvre inflicted on the female dancer shocked viewers but compelled us to sit on the edge of our seats, fascinated but fearing for the female dancer’s twisted and contorted shape. We collectively relaxed as her partner moved her more tenderly, interweaving her limbs with his own.
As the work unfolded, this theme of shock and fear followed by tenderness and resolve continued. Deep trust and emotion featured in each sequence of choreography. The dancers, Wu Shin-Jie and Lee Kuan-Ling are intense. They maintained a hypnotic pull as they constantly recalibrated, with unpredictable speed and duration, spiralling, yielding in and towards one another.
As the name of the work suggests there is the push and pull of attraction, love, which continually referenced a real and imagined space where Wu Shin-Jie and Lee Kuan-Ling interact. The in-between becomes a physical manifestation, a place that the dances move in and through, creating zones that affect their physical and emotional state (and ours). It was impressive to see how these dancers engaged with this illusory world and created a realm around them, one that was imagined so clearly and gestured to continually within the choreography, yet without props and with minimal lighting.
This work was so intentionally created. The dancers offered us a clearly divided place, with doorways, separated pathways that they moved through, bringing us into their imagined world: a maze that navigated us through tension and resistance and led us towards nurture, elation and freedom. They were connecting—lips, wrists, fingers, elbows, back—and each securely connected point of contact was loaded with immense power and intensity. The soundscape by composer Kuo Yu shifted the energy, creating suspense, ambiguity and uncertainty. This work kept me on the edge of my seat, eagerly awaiting the unpredictability offered by the emotively complex and physically virtuosic display, their actions let us peer into their world of love and turmoil. Wu Shin-Jie and Lee Kuan-ling were continually investigating the negative space between them, oscillating between limp, lifeless, weight bearing heaviness, instantly contrasted by soaring air and weightless action. They worked skilfully and intentionally with polarities—proximity and distance—with sensitivity and aggression. What resulted was a blending of movement that reconstructed their characters’ relationship in real time: fragments of metaphorical and literal tension, emotional and physical tremors, instability and intimacy. Push and Pull was loaded to the brim with emotional charge, yet without an outlet or specific climax. Rather, the work was made up of drawn-out sequences, climaxes creating a timeline or string of ongoing anticipation, each moment more precarious than the next. This work full of tension and impact and showcased its themes through sublime storytelling and choreographic complexity.
FORM’s program That’s Two, Thank You was joyous, bringing together (with their other duet programme Duels) a range of works that explored the potential of two bodies coming together in performance. While I enjoyed the programme, I found myself curious as to the criteria that could be used to assess one duet in competition with another. What do audiences (or in this case judges) see (and expect) when watching two bodies dance with one another. Are we inevitably drawn into story making when two people work together? Do we have a tendency to see (expect) narrative arcs when watching two bodies touch? I found myself looking for narrative intensions in each work, and wondered if we are drawn into this through the intensity of two bodies on stage? Are love, trust and betrayal, comedy, indifference and tragedy easier to feel (be impressed by) when we watch two bodies together? Is this the enduring success of the duet form?
FORM’s duet weekend provided a platform for this kind of speculation. It’s exciting to see young independent artists taking on the duet form, getting a chance to re-work and re-perform their pieces, and to offer local work alongside internationally acclaimed choreographers. FORM’s support for the independent dance sector is to be commended.
That’s Two, Thank You
Eternity Playhouse, Thursday 9 & Friday 10 April 2026
Works Presented:
Merge
Choreographer: Anastasios Repousi (Bboy Taz)
Dancers: Naethiel ‘Tango’ Lumbera and Akuma Diva
Please… continue?
Choreographers and Performers: Remy Rochester & Angus Onley
Lighting Design: Theo Carroll
Music: John Wasson Caravan & Caleb Arredondo Endo Sax Ascent
Push and Pull
Artistic Director & Choreography: Lai Hung-Chung, Hung Dance
Dancers: Wu Shin-Jie and Lee Kuan-Ling
Music: Kuo Yu
Lighting Design: Tsai Chao-Yu
Costume Concept: Lai Hung-Chung
Producing Organisation: FORM Dance Projects
Producer: Tobiah Booth-Remmers
Creative Director: Paul Selwyn Norton
Alexandria Panetta (Lexy) is a Sydney-based artist, choreographer and academic with a strong interest in dance performance, improvisation, writing and film. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Dance), a Bachelor of Arts (Education) and completed Honours in Dance Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). In 2022, she was awarded a competitive research scholarship to undertake a Master of Philosophy (Creative Practice) at UNSW. Her thesis, Enacting (Re)Actions: Affect Theory and Embodied Resonance in Improvisational Contemporary Dance and Compositional Pedagogy, examines the generative core of improvisation and its role in choreographic development, contributing new perspectives to dance education across NSW and Australia. Lexy teaches across dance and education faculties at the Australian College of Physical Education (ACPE) and is Learning Associate for Sydney Dance Company (SDC) and a Teaching Artist touring with the company, bringing her research into dialogue with industry training and practice.