Life in Movement

Overview

It is hard to watch Life in Movement without wanting it to tell a different story. A documentary, it is the tale of German-born choreographer Tanja Liedtke and her journey towards scoring the amazing prestige of artistic directorship at the Sydney Dance Company at the age of 29. Directors Bryan Mason and Sophie Hyde construct this part of her story with a combination of private footage — the scratch recordings made by Liedtke in bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and the corners of dance studios — and recordings of her two feature-length productions.

The sheer talent and energy of Liedtke is undoubtable from this footage. Her precision of movement, her sense of humour and her surreal imagination are clear markers of a talent that deserved the accolades she collected, and it is here that Life In Movement is likely to break many a viewer's heart. For Liedtke was killed by a garbage truck one night in 2007, a tragedy that impacted on not only her immediate family but also the dance community at large.

This event is at the epicentre of the second part of Life in Movement — what came after, when her collaborators, all set to work for the next few years as part of her company in Sydney, were suddenly orphaned. Told through interviews, candid videos and performance recordings, this aspect of the documentary you cannot help but think of as being an Australian equivalent to Wim Wenders' Pina.

There is certainly a link between the two films in that they are tributes, except that the story of Liedtke, her family and her collaborators clearly is a cord cut short. Where Pina's Tanztheater Wuppertal company are hagiographic, the voices of Paul White, Kristina Chan, Solon Ulbrich and others describe a companion and colleague who was utterly human and may still be dancing in the next room.

Given this, Life In Movement often takes on a subtly spiritual mood. Footage of Liedtke performing sequences from her shows is edited into sequences from posthumous performances, which Mason and Hyde use to illustrate just how much of Liedtke remains in her work and her collaborators. So too is Liedtke's partner, Ulbrich, contrasted with her presence — we are shown his efforts to remount Twelfth Story and Construct as tribute to her memory, but it is clear that in spite of his energy and passion, there is something irrevocably absent from these rehearsals.

As a tribute and a biography of the late Tanja Liedtke, Life in Movement is an honouring and heartbreaking piece of cinema. Yet it is also a fascinating and important insight that is often forgotten when discussing the production of art — there are human beings behind those moving bodies, with all manner of emotions, personalities and ambitions. No great work springs forth from a vacuum, and even if it does not provoke a stirring of loss, Life in Movement will certainly reveal the warmth of this neglected side to Australian dance.

Screening at Hoyts Cinema Paris and Dendy Opera Quays.