Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela on the long-awaited 2021 world premiere of Impermanence

The birth of a concept.

The idea of Impermanence came about in conversation with Bryce Dessner in July 2019.

This was not my first-time meeting Bryce. In 2015 I had choreographed Frame of Mind to one of his existing scores. I absolutely loved creating it, and the result was a very powerful work which audiences and critics all enjoyed. Bryce saw a run-through of the work when he came to the studio to meet me and the dancers. He loved it, and at that moment we knew there was more we could do together, so I commissioned Impermanence.

The title of the work reflects on the ephemeral nature of life. I met with Bryce in Paris, where he lives, shortly after Notre Dame had been burned down. He shared thoughts he’d been having about how easily things fall apart, even structures we imagine to be eternal, and we talked about the fragility and impermanence of human life, the planet and human relationships. There’s something both so beautiful and so devastating about that and we decided that we wanted to explore this concept through music and choreography.

In November 2019, Bryce was deep in the process of writing the music when the bush fires in Australia reached catastrophic levels. Images were beamed across the world, and Bryce was deeply affected by what he was seeing on TV. The images of the Australian bush on fire really entered the work and his thinking. He was profoundly moved; he had been here, he had met the dancers, and there was a genuine personal connection for him.

The choreography.

The philosophical concept of change made me think on the ephemeral, the fleeting, things that exist only in a moment and are then transformed. For me personally, the awareness of the impermanence of everything makes me feel that we must use every moment – that every moment counts – and that the transitory nature of life inspires a need for energy, urgency and radiance.

Bryce is an incredible composer and there is an intricacy, complexity and virtuosity in the writing of the score that I love; the patterns are constantly shifting, and this really reflects how I like to work. There are layers and layers beyond the original concept, and I worked with the dancers to interrogate the emotion behind that concept. We workshopped feelings of panic and alarm, the rush of adrenaline and the juxtaposition between force and inertia. I am a choreographer obsessed with craft and this score is the perfect counterpoint to the movement we have created.

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World premiere season February 16 – 27 at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney’s reinvigorated vibrant Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.