Virtuosi

Somehow I’d forgotten how much I loved Melbourne. There was always the glimmer of memory, the sparkle of well-loved times, and yet it wasn’t until I was walking back to the Victorian College of the Arts to see the showcase of Sue Healey’s new film “Virtuosi” that it hit home how good it is to be back.

Being back in my old university stirred some interesting feelings within me, and yet the most potent was the certainty that I had grown in the last four years. I felt different, bigger, ironically sensing that humility has somehow enlarged my sense of self. I was taken aback with this shift in perception; did the film do this to me, or the location? An apt thought perhaps, given Healey’s topic for conversation…

“Virtuosi” is not a film you walk out of feeling diminished. An empowering perspective, “Virtuosi” follows the pathway of eight New Zealand dancers, all of whom have flung themselves far and wide of their homeland. In this context, Healey examines how much where you are defines who you are, and how much of where you came from affects you. Stepping forward and back, side to side, these portraits of dancers are fragmented and yet whole, seeing two sides of these individuals as they talk with such pizazz and dance with honesty.

Moving with startling similarity, it was clear where individuals had come from, stating with absoluteness that where you were born and first trained affects how you move; yet we are, after all, complex beings. Their sophistication of movement had come from their adopted country, the subsequent experience of their everyday lives. In choosing to move, they changed the coating of their self, yet what lies beneath is relatable and familiar to a New Zealand landscape.

I feel it in my own bones. Definitively an Australian mover I now have a coating. The frost and nuance of England has woven its way into my stitches and become a part of how I move. It’s given me opportunity and individuality and in an art form that only really leaves one with the sense of creating your own opportunities, acknowledges the trail of where I’ve been.

If you can see this film, please do. It’s rare a film engages the optimism of art; yet this film manages to in leaps and bounds.

Choreographer/Filmmaker: Sue Healey

Composer: Mike Nock

Director of Photography: Judd Overton

Editors: Lindi Harrison and Sue Healey

Dancers: Mark Baldwin, Craig Bary, Lisa Densem, Raewyn Hill, Sarah-Jayne Howard, Jeremy Nelson, Ross McCormack and Claire O’Neil