LGI/

The Making of Structure and Sadness

“Structure and Sadness has been an engrossing and challenging work.

It is based on the West Gate Bridge collapse in Melbourne, which occurred in 1970 while it was under construction killing 35 men. I researched and read many accounts of the disaster and the experiences of the victims, some whose stories of escape were quite miraculous. The difficult part was to extract from this compelling story the elements of a dance piece.

The dancers and I spent a lot of time finding a movement vocabulary for this work. After a while it became clear that the physical forces acting on the bridge and the emotional impact on those involved, both had a similar movement vocabulary. The buckling of steel when applied to the human body as a movement idea creates a sense of emotional collapse.

So it was the two interpretations of collapse, structural and emotional, one a result of the other, that became the central themes of the work. Objects used in conjunction with the human body were a strong source of inspiration. Weeks and months were spent figuring out how the body might conform to bits of wood, boards, elastic under tension, a painter’s plank.

The dancers had an amazing capacity to pursue these physical puzzles but for me there was always an element of tension. Would a dancer fall off the plank, the elastic flick in the wrong direction, the wood hit someone. Although these risks were small it reinforced the element of danger that is present when hard materials, the human body and gravity come together.

All these ideas belong to the tangible world. A royal commission determined in great detail the events that lead to the collapse. “Error begat error…and the events which led to the disaster moved with the inevitability of a Greek Tragedy,” it stated.

That tragedy is the unknowable, invisible cost in human suffering and loss of life. Grief has its own unseen trajectory that can’t be measured or explained. Although the bridge was rebuilt and serves as a valuable connector between the west and the inner city communities, for many people who still recall the event, it is the dead that come to mind when they travel it.

Lucy Guerin

Structure and Sadness is in two parts.

The first part focuses on the concept of ‘structure’ and is ushered in with a soundtrack that features the sounds of materials – wood, concrete, steel – creaking under stress.

Six dancers perform solos and duets based on the work of construction. Their movements are both fluid and resistant and embody structural principles such as tension, compression, gravity and shearing: “Weeks and months were spent figuring out how the body might conform to bits of wood, boards, elastic under tension, a painter’s plank”, reflected Lucy Guerin (Structure and Sadness Program, 2007).

As these dances unfold, the performers simultaneously work patiently at constructing a large-scale ‘house of cards’ – the metaphoric West Gate Bridge – consisting of small and large plywood pieces.

“We know it will fall down”, wrote critic Alison Croggon in 2009, “but when it does it is wholly unexpected: one little piece is knocked over and the whole thing folds like a row of dominoes, amplifying disaster until the whole stage is covered in litter” (Theatre Notes, 2009).

The latter part of Structure and Sadness deals with the aftermath and emotional responses to the collapse. A woman singing along to the radio is interrupted by a news report about the collapse of the West Gate Bridge. Three women clad in long black dresses dance with the heaviness of sorrow under flickering fluorescent lighting. Finally, a wooden plank is placed on top of the dancers and the last dancer walks over them before vanishing side-stage.

“Grief is physicalised”, wrote critic John Bailey, “not as an abstract notion but rather as a thing inextricably bound to the sequence of cause and effect that reduces the bridge to rubble”, (Structure and Sadness Program, 2007).

Following on from successful shows at the 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival, Structure and Sadness had subsequent Australian performances in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne as well as touring internationally in Ireland, Germany and the United States.

View a range of archival material related to this work in the LGI Digital Collection on the Theatre and Dance Platform at the University of Melbourne.

In 2007, Structure and Sadness was awarded a Helpmann Award for Best Dance Work and an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Company.