DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060717

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SUE VanHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

ANYTHING GOES FOR MUSICIANS, DANCERS DIRECTOR'S BLURRY VISION SHARPENED TO CLEAR VIEW

IT WAS A POSITIVELY radical approach.

To create his latest evening-length piece, ``Free Radicals,'' Graeme Murphy, artistic director of Australia's Sydney Dance Company, assembled 16 dancers and a trio of percussionists - and started completely from scratch.

``There was no pre-existing music, no steps, no concept to come to,'' he recalled recently from Seattle, one of a handful of stops on the acclaimed company's current U.S. tour, which comes to the Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater on Saturday. ``We sat in a room, I had no preconception of where the work was going to go.''

What occurred over the next six weeks was a fascinating metamorphosis in which ``we started becoming more like musicians than dancers, counting rhythms and working on some key rhythms that became the whole structure of the piece. The dancers became very confident after about three days with the complicated rhythms the musicians were throwing at us. I think it improved our musicianship enormously and the way we thought about music became quite different.

``Equally, the musicians had to learn our vocabulary, too, because they were actually involved in moving with the dancers at times. It really is the blurring of the line between music and dance, which I think is great. This way, there's a great equality.''

Indeed, Murphy's onstage musicians - esteemed Aussie composer/percussionist Michael Askill, Alison Low Choy and Alison Eddington - are an integral part of the motion, even whacking out rhythms in different pitches on the dancers' bodies.

``Percussionists have a lovely vocabulary of movement anyway because they play so many different instruments and it's very physical,'' Murphy said of the musicians' apparent aptitude for dance. ``It's not like a flute that is just seated - it often involves the full body.

``The concept of percussion, people think of rhythmic banging, but there's such moments of lyricism (in `Free Radicals'). And the instrumentation they've chosen'' - from castanets and tap shoes to terra cotta pots and metal salad bowls - ``has meant an incredible variety. You don't have a sense of three percussionists banging things at all. At times it's quite orchestral.''

Murphy's collaborated previously with Askill, though to extant percussion scores with the company's ``Synergy With Synergy.'' The idea of simultaneously growing the dance and the music, Murphy confesses, is ``part of that megalomanic thing of wanting to have more control.

``I've often commissioned works and basically you commission them and then you just have to sit back and wait for them to hatch. Then you get the score and you either like it or you hate it. This way I thought it would be so wonderful if we could be part of the music-making. The dancers use vocals, they sing, they play instruments, they're involved with the musicians, they make music. We actually had input into the type of music that would be made.''

As satisfying as the process was, though, commencing from a completely clean slate was terrifically daunting, Murphy said. Yet, ``I can't imagine ever working any other way,'' he said. ``I'm ruined. It's very hybrid and living, there's nothing static about it. The next piece we're going to incorporate some other instruments.''

Murphy also works frequently outside of Sydney Dance Company, even far outside his field. A few years ago, for instance, he ventured onto the ice with champion skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

``I took things from that particular discipline and fed it back into dance,'' Murphy said of the unusual experience. ``Equally, I've put techniques on those skaters that they might not have normally encountered. Chris was always fascinated by lifting and partnering and that's sort of my forte.

``Unfortunately, I never got to the point of being a good skater. I had some little cleated shoes made just so I could keep up with them, they go a million miles an hour. My stamina was great though, I was running from one end of the rink to the other.''

Murphy's also passionate about opera, which he's directed and choreographed. Next year he'll be working with New York City's Metropolitan Opera, choreographing its production of ``Samson and Delilah.''

``I like opera,'' Murphy said. ``I find opera relates well to dance. Choreographers bring a lot of necessary visuals to what could be a very static art form.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

WANT TO GO?

WHAT: ``Free Radicals,'' Sydney Dance Company

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: The Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater

TICKETS: $18-$26

INFO: 671-8100

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