Instead he devised soft bruising, a challenging piece which looks at love and compares it with a marathon - underlined by the use of two joggers who run for the duration of the ballet.
As the pulse of the dance quickens so do they, usually together but sometimes apart. Like the romantic cliche, they strive to reach each other and cannot.
soft bruising is as much about the battles, games and anguish of love as romanticism. As its title implies, love's wounds can be subtle but deep.
There are romantic moments, but there are sequences that, combined with a sometimes discordant score, are an assault on the senses.
There are sequences in which the sense of drama through movement overwhelms so that the dancers are moving parts of one taut tableau. Moulding and arranging themselves with seemingly effortless precision, the dancers are a credit to this highly energetic work, which generally steers clear of self-conscious cleverness.
And with a simple but moving ending, soft bruising concludes with an optimistic note which uplifts and reassures that all the pain is indeed worth it.
24 May 1990
Photo: Branco Gaica
Soft Bruising was first performed by the Sydney Dance Company in May of 1990. Choreographed by Graeme Murphy, it is an abstract work alluding to love, the heart, blood pumping through the veins, and other notions symbolically connected to the colour red.
