Hyperfantasia is a delicious cocktail of joyful, morose, and charming physical theatre sketches. Enneagon Movement, a Boorloo-based dance collective co-founded and directed by Giorgia Schijf, has made a song and a dance of flapper liberation, feminism, and the sexual politics of the 1920s, all in the highest of heels, with sultry and morbid undertones.
Hyperfantasia is a witty physical theatre exploration of femininity, romance, feminism, dance, clowning and drunken comedic passion. With a sultry start and slightly shocking ending, the show kicks off its heels and lets the flapper energy reign unconstrained.
The show opens with a medley of melancholic jazz standards, then begins to traverse wilder territory, spanning a handful of vignettes and songs that are definitely very entertaining!
An opening scene with the kind of physical comedy that Jacques Lecoq himself would be proud of, Minni Karamfiles and Giorgia Schijf work the crowd with vigorous performances. The dulcet tones of Perth singer Amy Ehlers had me hook, line, and sinker – her range is incredible. The gentle set-up had me fooled as the show breaks out into a hilarious punch-drunk swaggering rampage with a macabre ending.
While the Ellington Jazz Club was an venue with the right atmosphere on paper, the sparseness of the stage didn’t do the performers justice. However, the gumption of the characters created on stage, the music, the 20s bootleg underground feel, and the overall laughter-inducing sketches made the night.
The dancers stay true to Enneagon’s vision of working around the borders of dance and theatre. Hyperfantasia felt real, experimental, and busting with hilarity. Jacques Lecoq would be proud as punch.
MAYA-ROSE CHAUHAN
Hyperfantasia by Enneagon Movement was presented from 17 – 18 Jan 2025 at Ellington Jazz Club for FRINGE WORLD.
