Fable, fetish and flights of the fantastical in Faraway
A new work by acclaimed director Jenni Large stretches Australian Dance Theatre dancers to the limits.
There’s a moment when speaking to choreographer Jenni Large that seems to crystallise everything at the core of her practice. She’s poring through some costumes and picks up a piece by Neis Studio, a local artist who transforms silicone into uncanny skin-like garments.
In this moment, Jen is holding a pair of silicone skin underpants. She holds them delicately, marvels at the strangeness. She looks up, emotional all of a sudden: ‘These are so, so special.’
The body is at the core of everything Jenni Large does. Specifically, the dancer’s body. In her work, the body is stretched to extremity. The dancer moves beyond subject into a role of dominant control. Power is subverted. Her work takes on the quality of silicone skin – sexy, unsettling, strange and calling attention to its own artifice.
In Faraway, a newly commissioned work for Australian Dance Theatre that’s premiering at the 2026 Adelaide Festival, Large turns her eye to our collective methods for escape – exploring the links between fantasy and fetish.
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“Kink is incredibly creative and can be highly performative – it’s essentially theatrics,” Large says. “And fairy tales take on a vocabulary that makes the impossible feel possible; they’re both vital sensory, social and psychological pleasures
“I’m interested in disassembling the pathology that surrounds these things, especially kink. I want the work and the power of the dancers to change the way that we think about fantasy, fear and frivolity.”
At the spine of Large’s work are ideas of disassembly and subversion. Through the immense work of the dance itself, she seeks to tear apart the things we take for granted. In Faraway, the two seemingly diametrically opposed worlds of fable and kink are revealed to run in parallel. This is all underpinned by the way Large masterfully massages and manipulates tension and control within the work.
“I have a long-term love affair with slow-motion movement,” she says. “To see a dancer move with such intention, control and focus has this quality … it’s like an intake of breath with no exhale. It creates this very palpable tension in the room that is only released when the dancer ruptures into more frenetic movement.
“Quite often, when people come and see dance, there is this assumption the dancers are there to be looked at. And they are, in a lot of ways. But this form of movement really draws attention to the power dancers hold. It’s the performer who takes the audience on a journey to a far-off place, or not. That opens the portal to release. There’s power in observing, but there’s more power in being watched. Faraway encompasses all of that.”
In the intense, superhuman physicality of Large’s work, which sees ADT’s dancers inhabit almost inhuman shapes, flights of fancy and fantasy aren’t portrayed as meagre or purely esoteric but essential to how we process, and exist in, the world.
“I’ve been blown away by the generosity and ability of the team at ADT,” she says. “These dancers have come to the movement so beautifully. Each dancer is playing with archetypes from the world of fantasy – sirens, knights, minotaur – and shifting between creature and human, between pleasure, pain and temptation.”
In the past few years, Large has emerged as a singular choreographic voice in Australia. Her works LIP, Body Body Commodity and, most notably, Wet Hard Long have positioned her as a fearless and uncompromising artist operating at the forefront of choreographic practice.
“Jenni Large is an extraordinary artist,” Australian Dance Theatre’s artistic director Daniel Riley says. “Part of the joy of this role is introducing our artists and audiences to new makers and dance languages, and opening the door to other remarkably built choreographic worlds, and Jenni does this brilliantly.
“Seeing the choreography in relation to Anna Whitaker’s sound is an exciting adventure. And as always with ADT works, Adelaide Festival audiences are in for a powerful piece of storytelling.”
On the subject of silicone skin-like garments, it’s unlikely the dancers will be wearing them during the show (they are too delicate to perform in), but ideas of bodily distortion will permeate the work through prop, costume and choreography.
“In a lot of ways, my work is about the body in relationship to something else,” Large says. “I use apparatus, texture and costume to examine relational dynamics and the acts of contortion we all take part in every day. Just like fairy tale and fetish are places for people to safely explore a variety, I want my work to be a place where people feel free, or scared, or turned on, or challenged or excited . . . I just really can’t wait to keep building this world and bring it to an audience.”
Faraway will have its world premiere in the Adelaide Festival from February 25 to March 1. Tickets are available here.
