Like Air

Asked to define the work of Melbourne-based dancer Jo Lloyd, I wonder: How do you grasp a sensation? Her work has always been, is always, on the precipice, pushing the limits and problems of culture, form, aesthetics, and conventions. To find the limits, Jo seeks to infiltrate the collusion of mind and motion, to conjure up configurations that connect the muscles to mind, and that move the mind as a muscle – therein lies the limitless.

This dance, FM Air (2023), is the dancing of this bind, an arrangement of the images and texts that stream through the fingertips and the pores, it’s haptic. Smell the dance: ‘It is like an odour, a perfume,’ says Jo, ‘ephemeral’. Take a breath, or a sniff. But let it pass. A chimera of memory, a palimpsest of earlier works, each made of the many layers of the other: Confusion for Three (2015) of the mind and body, OVERTURE (2018) of the gendered roles in the minds and bodies of the Mendelssohns, Handsome (2022) of the wackiness of being ‘in mind.’ Or the many other ‘out-of-theatre’ projects that she has made: Bang Stop (2022), Death Role (2021), Garden Dance (2019), LIVE JUNK (2018 and 2019), CUTOUT (2018). In so much of her work, the past has tried to get a foothold in the body of the now through movements that may have belonged to ancestors or ghosts not quite known. But, as in any historical continuity, there is always a sense that the dance must keep thinking and the thinking must dance, a continuous loop. No binary here, but an ephemeral pulp, ground into a mass of living and changing essence.

FM Air is about the proximity of three dancers with personal histories spread out through generations and cultures. It’s about the proximity of the vast space they find themselves in – the proximity of the viewer to it all. The social necessity of such proximal relationships asks that attention and responsibility be paid to the problems (there are always problems) by all involved here. Jo’s collaborations with musician Duane Morrison stabilises each problem that she sets. Here, they work music into an ambience in which each delivers a solution to play with. The dancers, likewise – Rachael Wisby, Thomas Woodman, and Jo – map their own choreography of cues, moves, positions, meetings, and dramatic narratives. The costume designer Andrew Treloar always throws in more problems, and clues.

How does the viewer arrive in this continuous collaborative loop? There is an arrival, but is there also a beginning from which to find an entry? In fact, no. There is only desire. So I watch, transfixed, scared to let go lest I miss the detail, the dynamic in the back or the twist of an arm, the shape of the leg, the definition of a gesture, or the decision to move or not. I can feel the impulse generate in me, my mind, my body, my sensibility. This is how I know the dance. How you know, is for you.