I am very bored with the ugliness that surrounds us on every level -- the ugliness of humanity and the abject misery when you turn on the television and the fact that all we ever hear is bad news. Dance is more and more reflecting the ugliness and the brutality, and that's fine -- you have to reflect society. But if there are only glimmers of beauty left and we're not reflecting them, will they go completely?"

- Graeme Murphy, Artistic Director Sydney Dance Company

We all could relate with Murphy's lament at times. Amidst the violence, sadness, and tragedy that confront us on a daily basis, it's nice, and necessary, to elevate the beauty that's out there. Air and other Invisible Forces, performed by the Sydney Dance Company on November 14 in the Concert Hall, is Graeme Murphy's vehicle to celebrate beauty. It is a piece that is fine and detailed and depends greatly on the correlation of the elements and the beautifully connected tangents they go off in.

The interaction with other art forms -- music, visual arts, theatre, design, and storytelling -- has always been a greater source of ideas for Murphy than dance itself. In creating Air, Murphy brought together a team of artistic visionaries to create an entirely abstract work, a stream of emotions and response to the music so that the music becomes another buffeting force, as if it were blowing the dancers around and playing with them. It received its original inspiration from a 1991 work, Mourned by the Wind, by contemporary Gregorian composer Giya Kanchelli. For Air, composer Michael Askill introduced Tibetan wind prayer chants, Thai folk songs, lullabies and the collaboration of Riley Lee on the shakuhachi (Japanese flute). Fashion designer Akira Isogawa created costumes that seem to breathe, some almost resembling gills. Gerard Manion's imaginative stage device of a huge respirating lung seems to act as the life force that moves each of the dancers. Each of these artists has brought his own thoughts and reactions to the abstract theme of Air and has influenced Murphy's choreography.

So escape the bad news and tired sitcoms on the TV: relax and breathe in the spiritual landscape of the Sydney Dance Company's Air and other Invisible Forces on Tuesday, November 14 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, call the UMass Box Office at 545-2511 or 1-800-UMAS.