The West Australian Ballet opened its contemporary dance season in the mellow, wood-clad Heath Ledger Theatre with three diverse works by Graeme Murphy, Melanie Lane and Adam Alzaim, all of whom were present to watch the audience’s anything but mellow reaction to their works.

The three works had a similar theme. Lane describes it as “the love-sickness” of our existence but the three choreographers’ approach was as different as the myriad reasons each person suffers from it.

Dancers of West Australian Ballet in Adam Alzaim’s GAINSBOURG. Photograph © Bradbury Photography

Take the incorrigible French reprobate Serge Gainsbourg for instance upon whom Alzaim based his first full 30-minute work called GAINSBOURG. This creation was accompanied and permeated by the songs Gainsbourg wrote and sang in his throaty tobacco-coated voice – some for his muse Brigid Bardot and some just for himself. What an ego this man apparently had. Alzaim has captured this in his witty and cartoonish portraits of Gainsbourg’s companions and of Gainsbourg himself, behaving badly in a basement bar, dressed in burgundy androgynous sleeveless suiting or navy school-uniform-like tunics (designed by Alzaim.)

Moving around the stage, hands flopping down...