Jazmyn Carter and Gabriel Sinclair | Review by Rohan Alston-Fisher
Interesting Concepts Fail to Rise Beyond Repetition
25 September 2025
Superposition is a contemporary dance performance that debuted at Canberra Theatre Centre before touring to the Sydney Fringe Festival. This two-person work, created and performed by Jazmyn Carter and Gabriel Sinclair, explores the clashes and collaborations between human and machine through a dance of yin and yang, two people mirroring the other’s movements, always on opposite sides of one another, but never touching.
The concept is fascinating: the dancers almost solely move their arms, intertwining with the other’s but never touching, while a synthesised soundtrack plays that occasionally turns into music based on the dancers’ movement, but is in need of refinement. The dance used a lot of ostinatos (repeated sequences of choreography and music), to the point that by the first thirty minutes of the performance, you had seen all it had to offer in terms of choreography, which within the limitations of the arms-based movement, became needlessly repetitive quite quickly.
There were one or two moments that were unique and quite powerful, such as when the dancers moved away from each other and started slowly circling one another, or when they froze, holding their arms next to each other; but these moments lost their impact when they lasted several minutes each before something different happened. Moments being held too long or taking too long to move onto something different was an issue throughout, especially during the beginning.
At the start, the dancers slowly interconnected their arms as the droning of a synthesiser grew louder and louder, setting up for a fast paced and transfixing choreographed sequence of mirroring and intricate movement that was really enjoyable, but the introduction took at least ten minutes, which gets boring quite quickly when Carter and Sinclair are just repeating the same movement and slowly doing it faster and faster.
All in all, this dance had an unappealing beginning and left an unsatisfying ending. Despite the promising concepts and bold, new choreographic choices, the work still needs some development. I found that most of the time I was transfixed to Carter and Sinclair because I was waiting for something interesting to happen, yet when that moment came, it didn’t hit the mark.
Rohan Alston-Fisher has been with Canberra Youth Theatre for a number of years and joined their Young Critics program in the hopes of enhancing his skills as a writer and actor, and to have a great time watching and discussing theatre with friends. He has had a passion for theatre and acting since a young age, so he’s enjoying the chance that Young Critics has given him to review and watch productions all around Canberra. Rohan is also a part of Next Stage, Canberra Youth Theatre’s workshop program for young actors interested in a professional career.
