Review: Co3’s Gathering.1 at The Liberty Theatre

Co3 Contemporary Dance’s Gathering.1 at The Liberty Theatre
Wednesday, June 18, 2025

May of this year saw the tenth birthday of Perth contemporary dance company Co3 (pronounced Koh Three). That’s a major milestone for any arts organisation, but especially for a contemporary dance company based on this most isolated of western shores. To commemorate the occasion, Wednesday night the company launched its latest production, Gathering.1, followed by an opening night birthday party. A grand affair in the newly renovated Liberty Theatre, Perth’s contemporary dance community was out in force.

To get the pun in the show’s title, you need to pronounce it in full: Gathering Point One. (A new name for the Liberty, perhaps?) The show presented the work of four choreographers: Co3 artistic director Raewyn Hill and independent artists Logan Ringshaw, Kimberley Parkin and Mitch Harvey. Their works were loosely joined together by a series of short interstitial pieces devised and performed by members of the aptly named Link dance company under the direction of Michael Whaites.

Neither on stage nor in the round, the show was instead presented in ‘nightclub mode.’ A limited number of seats were set around the perimeter, way too few for the audience, while the centre of the auditorium, which now slopes gently downward towards the stage, was largely empty. Images of past Co3 works were projected onto the side walls in a kaleidoscopic collage developed by lighting designer Mark Haslam. More like a club or dance hall than a theatre, the seats were quickly taken, leaving the majority of the audience to mill around the middle.

The first piece was Raewyn Hill’s What Remains. Nine black-clad dancers, looking a little like non-gender-specific Quakers, climbed onto a small platform to the side at the front and engaged in a slow-mo sculptural dance. To a sound score by Eden Mulholland, as a group they would slowly revolve and meld together on the tight stage in ever-changing, complex configurations. Some would crouch and lean forward as others reached out above them, embracing or pushing and pulling against each other. Falling together and apart, writhing rhythmically, it was powerful and arresting, sensual and monumental.

As the program points out, Hill gained her inspiration for this work from the history of Co3, taking elements from the company’s past shows and reconfiguring them into this abstract, organic form.

The next three pieces, all of similar length and intensity, were built from various subsets of this core ensemble. To a soundscape by DJ Aslan, they were all performed in the centre of the room amid the audience.

On each piece—Ringshaw’s The Rest is Noise, a quartet; Parkin’s Tri Hard, a triad; and Harvey’s Huh, an octet—the dancers would carve out a space within the crowd and engage with and without them. The audience would constantly reconfigure around the performers, giving them room and then stepping back as they rushed towards them and broke through into a new area.

Playful and twirling, by turns intense and energetic, the dancers would constantly refigure among themselves, enacting a plethora of different combinations—sometimes in pairs, sometimes in triads, sometimes alone, breaking out and then flying back into unison. At points they would dance with the audience, at others pull back into their own tightly choreographed hub.

In the dark outfits and tightly connected, sometimes glacial, sometimes frenetic movement, the show was mildly reminiscent of the Larsen C production from this year’s Perth Festival. The choreographers and dancers may have been influenced by this recent work, though the elements, especially the blacks, are universal enough that they could easily have reached similar conclusions.

In between these intensely choreographed sequences, the lights would come up slightly, the projections would return, and the roar of the audience talking would fill the room. But during these moments a second set of dancers from the Link company peppered the crowd.

Link, a long-term collaborator of Co3, is the graduate dance company based at the WA Academy of Performing Arts. It provides tertiary-trained dancers with the simulated experience of being a member of a dance company while they complete their one-year honours degree.

The five brightly clad performers engaged with the audience in playful and impish ways. Often flicking balloons into the air or at individuals in the crowd, they would cheekily and gently capture your attention. There were some set pieces—one dancer lying on their back on the floor was picked up by the others and carried aloft through the room; a sequence on the stage where the performers congregated and threw balloons above an upward-facing fan so that they would fly up and flip out into the space—but more so the interactions were random and spontaneous. It was a constant, gentle reminder that this was a performance, not just a gathering.

All up, it was a wonderfully entertaining show—sensual, disruptive, startling and playful. Different from what people may have anticipated and challenging through the immediacy of its engagement, it was an original night’s dance that fully engaged the older, opening night crowd. No doubt it will fire even more intensely with a younger, club-oriented audience.

Gathering.1 was developed through Co3’s In.Residence program. Aimed at leading independent choreographers, this is the most complex of the three artist development platforms provided by the company under its Pathways initiative. The selected choreographers were provided with a commission fee that enables them to enhance their artistic practice and develop a work up to a final performance level. As this show attests, it is an effective program that allows for experimentation and the exploration of different ideas.

In his gracious speech at the after-party, Executive Director and Co-CEO Hilary McKenna announced that the Wright Burt Foundation, a long-term supporter, has generously committed a further $150,000 to Co3’s operations. A fitting birthday present for this vibrant young company, Co3 is now mounting a fundraising campaign to match this contribution from other philanthropic sources. Hoping to reach its goal in time for the launch of their next production, Hill’s In The Shadow of Time, this September, it has already secured a further $37,000.

With this show and its new partnership, Co3 is now well on the way to a successful second decade. Happy birthday!

Gathering.1 runs at the Liberty until this coming Sunday, June 22. Tickets for all performances are available from the Co3 website.

At 6pm on Friday, immediately prior to the evening performance, there will be a special In.Coversation panel discussion open to the public. This will be an opportunity to find out more about the ideas informing this exciting new work.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Shotweiler Photography