WITH Stephen Page being artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, it was a fair bet that dance would be significant in the 2004 Adelaide Festival, and indeed it formed a strong spine throughout, with five diverse companies. A few programs were divisive, especially Australian Dance Theatre’s Held, a collaboration with New York photographer Lois Greenfield, whose images taken at 1/2000th of a second spectacularly snap-freeze dancers in mid-flight. Greenfield was onstage, snapping away, her shots projected almost instantaneously on two big screens. The dancers are a superb bunch of physical artists, and this imaginative project gave insight into the photographer’s technique and choice of movement, but was offputting to those who were irritated by her presence and by the distraction of the still photos of past action, however recent. The concept was exciting; whether it can be developed further is another question.

Italian choreographer-dancer Emio Greco and Dutch director Pieter C Scholten’s Conjunto di Nero (2001) offered sophisticated lighting, idiosyncratic movement and astonishing performances. The five or six dancers, in long black shifts, moved with incredible speed and synchronicity, or singly along shafts of light, often moving in and out of darkness. All was well until towards the end when Greco appeared in white, invention slowed and self-indulgence took over. The specific areas of concentrated light contrasting with surrounding blackness meant that images were firmly implanted in the brain, but they are all that remain afterwards – not much content.

In Bangarra Dance Theatre’s triple bill, however, Stephen Page’s Rush (2002) had plenty of substance, challenging the audience with urban Aboriginal problems, especially drug-taking and the dilemma of encompassing both black and white cultures. Elma Kris’s powerful performance as a heroin victim, a gaoled Victor Bramich and a lyrical Sidney Saltner were outstanding members of a cast completely at ease with the potent amalgam of Aboriginal and western movement that Bangarra has so successfully developed.

Frances Rings’s new three-part work, Unaipon, avoided narrative, instead abstracting themes from the Aboriginal polymath’s life and work. In Ngarrandjeri, mysterious cloaked figures danced close to the floor, for Science, rubber strings stretching across the stage were turned into huge cats’-cradles and other geometric forms, in Religion white-clad dancers moved to Allegri’s Miserere, solemn but joyful.

Bangarra’s program began with Kabar, Kabur (Rumours), a quirky social comment by Indonesian Mugiyono Kasido, who contorted his flexible body and poked hands and feet through the sleeves and neck of his T-shirt in hilarious ways to express his belief that the elements of society, like the body’s, should work in harmony. If the message was obscure, the result was entertaining.

Where Kasido transformed traditional movement into solo physical theatre, the big ticket Ballet Nacional de España turned traditional flamenco into theatrical spectacle, with sharp, subtle but finally overdone lighting, fine costuming and pulsating dance. A line of virile men heel-rapping out rapid rhythms in precise unison, a swirl of beautiful women clicking their castanets with a cicada-like whirr, the high, melancholy wailing of the singers, the forceful thrumming of the guitars – the combination just couldn’t miss. In Mujeres (Women) (1993), artistic director Elvira Andrés melds traditional and modern movement, much as the Bangarra choreographers do, and with equal success, the six dancers moving with effortless grace, their soft, grey dresses accentuating the flowing lines of the choreography. José Granero’s Medea (1984), retelling the sorceress’s revenge on Jason, was less successful, though centred on three powerful performances by the lead dancers. Passages lost impact by being too long, and melodrama, heightened by billowing red smoke at the end, supplanted tragedy.

First in the dance program turned out to be best. The Australian Ballet’s Mr B – A Tribute to George Balanchine, gave the Festival a brilliant dance opening and music played with outstanding clarity and verve by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Nicolette Fraillon. The program brought Serenade (1934), the master choreographer’s first work after his arrival in America, Agon (1957), his greatest collaboration with Stravinsky, and Symphony in C (1948), a classical ballet on the grand scale to Bizet’s sparkling work written at 17. There were occasional lapses – a few of the young men had messy landings, Matthew Lawrence needed to loosen up his facial expression, Lucinda Dunn could have engaged with him more in their duets, and on the second night the women’s diagonal in Serenade should have been straighter – but these are quibbling comments on a program which was generally stunning in performance and historically absorbing. It brought us, on the second night, the exquisite Fan Xiaofeng from Shanghai as a guest artist, treasured by the charismatic Steven Heathcote in Agon, as well as Dunn and Lynette Wills (quite different but equally sharp in the same role on different nights), Timothy Harbour, ebullient and challenging, and Madeleine Eastoe and Marc Cassidy eating up the floor in Symphony in C.

What was missing from the 2004 dance program was something so extraordinary, so provocative, so mind-turning that it could have an influence, possibly a lasting one. Think of Merce Cunningham (1976), Pina Bausch’s Wupperthaler Tanztheater (1982), Jiri Kylian’s Nederlands Dans Theater (1986), Sankai Juku (1988), William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet (1994), Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (1998) or Ballets C de la B (2000). These pushed and pulled the minds of audiences and practitioners in startling new directions. Emio Greco/PC and Australian Dance Theatre came near to doing this without quite getting there.

Interestingly, a couple of Fringe shows went that much further, with an economy of means. And both used boxes. Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham’s Morphia Series explored the space between waking and dreaming, between the physical and the metaphysical, taking a very small audience of 10-12 people to a pitch black room, guiding them by torchlight to a bank of seats, then letting them see a square box gradually light before them, in which in three sequences Herbertson moved while a text was occasionally spoken. The theme was evil, destruction and a possible return to paradise. It was detailed and compelling.

More elaborately, in Pandora 88, Sven Till and Wolfgang Huffman of Potsdam’s Fabrik Company moved, physically and emotionally, in the confines of a tall box. They came to terms with their personal closeness, they fought, they made up, with great tenderness, they played a ridiculous game of hide and seek, and in a breathtaking sequence inspired by Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, they appeared to be weightless. The physical control was amazing, but it was the intellectual and emotional content of the piece that stays with you.

For different reasons, two Aboriginal items in the Fringe proved memorable (and there were many other Fringe shows I was not able to see). A group of male Bardi dancers from north-western Australia presented sequences from a corroboree, narrating the story of a man who became lost when fishing but found his way home. Using decorated shields as symbols, it was apparently simple, but rich in meaning. A group of Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara women, girls and boys from Central Australia gave a series of danced and sung stories, all brief but presented with concentration and dignity. These were a valuable complement not only to Bangarra’s performance, but, less obviously, to the Ballet Nacional de España; most of all to the magnificent David Gulpilil, whose tiny morsel of dance in his show was an excruciating enticement to want more.

There are a few dance lessons to be learnt from this Festival. The most important is that it’s necessary to have something that not only sets people talking – as each of the 2004 programs did – but that sets them thinking as well, not only about dance but about themselves, each other and the way we live our lives. Page’s Rush did this but muted the effect by being at times too long. The Fringe shows mentioned above did it. There were, I believe, several in Robyn Archer’s Melbourne Festival which did, too – and she scored a tremendous hit with mass public dance tuition in Federation Square. Something to consider, if not to copy exactly. Over to you, Brett Sheehy.