Jacqui was declared the ‘Most Outstanding Female Dancer 2012’ by the prestigious Dance Australia Critics Choice.

This 60-minute, gruelling and daring dance routine is being presented in The Blue Room Theatre, James Street, Northbridge each evening at 7.00 pm until Saturday 29^th November.

As the crowd gathers in the Blue Room bar to see the show, a leggy blonde (Jacqui Claus) in a little black dress giggles and tries to engage with the patrons. She seeks compliments for her body and eye-catching outfit, before buying a bottle of champagne. She swigs liberally, and soon she is well pickled and dancing wildly, with a great deal of style, to the pounding music. Rapidly, the next stage of drunkenness hits her and she has to retire delicately to the toilet (the main theatre).

The audience filter into the next door auditorium and take their seats. The girl is now much worse for wear and is leaning over a bathroom sink. The discordant music reflects the blood thrashing in her head along with the hiss of her laboured breathing (sound design Kingsley Reeve). Riddled with guilt and embarrassment, she staggers home to bed and has a restless night’s sleep. In her dreams – which are projected onto the reflective walls (visuals, Ashley de Prazer) – as she re-assesses her lifestyle, we can see the girl wandering on the beach.

As the breeze builds up, voices can be heard being carried on the wind (musician Kyle J Morrison on didge, and Joe Lui conventional instruments). On her bed the girl contorts, and then like a bird coming out of its shell, she twitches and stretches until she blossoms into a beautiful bird, preening itself and strutting around. Her bare back shows spectacularly how every bone and sinew develops and comes to life. The wreck of a woman has metamorphosed into an elegant, proud, long-legged, wading bird.

The sequence in the bar is similar to that seen in many a Northbridge bar after midnight. Jacqui captured the friendly, but slutty behaviour along with the tremendous dancing in one of the best ‘female drunk’ performances that I have ever seen.

The set’s reflective walls were a clever idea (designers Fiona Bruce and Lauren Ross) that allowed the room to change from a dirty, drab toilet to a large open space. Her writhing on the bed consisted of tortuous choreographic movements (movement director, Danielle Micich), which were carried out with smooth graceful movements that belied the immense skill and energy being employed.

Once again, Joe Lui has filled the stage with mood lighting that goes one step further, helping the audience to grasp the inner feelings of this ‘bird’s’ transformation. There is semi-nudity, but is certainly not gratuitous, as this wonderful dancer shows us the chick developing in the shell and breaking out, with all the tiny muscle movements involved.

I hate to link such graceful and perfect body movements to a cheap TV joke, but my memory drifted back to the 1964 UK ‘Opportunity Knocks’ programme, in which a muscle man did muscle movements in time to ‘Wheels Cha Cha’.

The director, Sally Richardson, and her assistant Katya Shevtsov, with dramaturg help from Humphrey Bower have given us an amazing performance.

This is the kind of contemporary dancing incorporating crippling athletic skills, that any professional dancing student would dream of achieving. Magnificent. Clever story theme, perfectly executed.

This amazing gruelling, contemporary dance routine is being presented by the Blue Room in conjunction with Sally Richardson and Patrice Smith. It is showing in the main theatre, Blue Room, 53 James Street, Northbridge.

The 60-minute performances are at 7.00 pm each alternate evening, interchanging with the equally breath-taking ‘Standing Bird’, until Saturday 30^th November.

The house lights dim, and the stage glows to show three dancers dressed in black, standing in three corners of the square stage. Two of the walls are large, reflective sheets of aluminium.

One of the shorter girls (Bernadette Lewis) strode up threateningly to the woman diagonally opposite (Laura Boynes), and glares at her in an intimidating manner. The woman is not frightened, so the attacker retreats and starts a training regime to make her more powerful for a future attack. Her exercises were heart-pounding, fast and focused. After a few minutes of a taxing workout, the girl starts a slow moving routine when she seemed to balance on an invisible fulcrum. Whilst standing on the toes of one foot, the other leg and her body would contort without the slightest flicker in her balance. A true demonstration of power and athleticism.

There follows a perfectly synchronised dance with the three performers bouncing off the walls like a set of pistons, rapidly the pace increased and the pattern of their movements became variable. The tallest dancer (Jacqui Claus) then begins upper torso flexing, starting with a tortuous neck movement, again, like the first dancer, she ended with a finely controlled, slow moving, balancing act. No sooner had she finished, when the third dancer challenged her in a brutal way. Realising her stupidity the aggressor ran away, but there was no escape as the others buffeted her around.

The pounding melody, with a blend of low rumbling kettledrums and the sharp click of drumsticks, the atmosphere was tense. This would be intermingled with short passages of soft piano music (sound design and production, Joe Lui and Kingsley Reeve). Joe Lui also devised the stunning subtle lighting. The dancers’ outfits were not the usual simple, pedestrian black dresses, but had good design (Fiona Bruce).

The actors filled the floor space and even invaded the audience space, as a leg or arm would be swung across in front of one’s face, effectively dragging the onlookers into their world. Even though the performance was highly physical, the dancers seemed to flow supplely through the routine, barely perspiring a drop – although one suspects that, a great deal of trauma was going on inside their bodies. The tension and unease between the actors was palpable in this interesting story thread (dramaturg by Humphrey Bower).

As someone who enjoys a waltz around the dance floor for a couple of tunes – then a rest – to watch 60-minutes of such skill, timing and exhausting perfection these human dynamos had my full admiration. The audience left absolutely drained.

Contemporary dance is not real my forte, and perhaps my interpretation is not quite right, but I am certain that most non-dancers would be stunned by such talent.

The team FULLY deserved their curtain call. Spectacular.