Anti-Gravity - Chunky Move

Below is my Herald Sun review of Anti-Gravity, published 21 March

At a basic level, Anti-Gravity is about clouds, but the performance hints at multiple mythological and spiritual levels. There’s a cast of six diverse dancers, yet Anti-Gravity emerges more as an interaction of bodies with objects and environments than a dance production. 

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

It has the distinct touch of a visual artist - To Tzu Nyen. He closely collaborates with Chunky Move’s artistic director,  Anouk van Dijk, to create an abstracted experience offering gradually evolving images and archetypes. The slowly unfolding activity of the humans with the materiality is a very gradual burn. To get the most out of it, audiences need to submit to the pace, not overthink it and allow it to just wash over them.  

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

On the cavernous black stage, in sharp squares of light (by Paul Jackson), individuals relentlessly pursue a single activity. Luigi Vescio rolls and caresses rocks around an astroturfed platform. James Batchelor stares into a shallow rectangular pool of water. Niharika Senapati is immersed with a laptop displaying skyscapes. Bursts from high powered smoke machines, subtle changes in light, the blowing of fans all slightly alter the environment, but the mood sustains.

Jethro Woodward’s spectacular sound score of sub-woofer drones layered with swelling and residing instrumentations prescribes the journey just as much as any other design contribution. 

It takes about half way through the 70 minute piece (just when all the barely moving feels stretched too long) for the individual, internalised vignettes to build into a kind of wild euphoria. Then things get interesting.

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

In that frenzy - when the dancers, in their various shapes and sizes, create heaving circles or rousing folkloric lines - are nuggets of Van Dijk’s exciting Countertechnique dance style. The kinetic thrill of the hurling bodies, often in boisterous and surprising duets, brings a much needed visceral punch, lifting Anti-Gravity out of the distant cerebral and into the startling presence before it simmers down again into more solipsistic activity. 

Anti-Gravity will divide audiences. It’s an immersive experience, rigorously developed, but those looking for the physicality of contemporary dance may miss the immediacy and kinetic excitement of more sustained choreography.

*** Stars

Anti-Gravity

Merlin Theatre, Malthouse Theatre

17-26 March 

Keep Everything

Choreographer Antony Hamilton is in the throes of a prolific period with more to come. In the past year  we have seen Drift in Dance Massive that had audiences riding in a car to a deserted area of the Docklands and watching the performance from inside the vehicle. This year Arts House presented Clouds Above Berlin which featured his duet Black Project 1 (read more from me about that here) and now Chunky Move has produced his new full length work Keep Everything. On top of this he has just received an impressive Australia Council Fellowship. Go Antony!

Hamilton has a distinct style, but his works feel vastly different from each other. There's a consistent  aesthetic but not necessarily a single formula to the pieces. His interests are wide reaching - visual arts, including graffiti culture, theatre processes that rely on slowing evolving patterns or dynamics and  movement that doesn't travel much through space and often has rhythmic and visual elements of popping and locking.

Action shot from Keep Everything.
Photo by Jeff Busby. 

Keep Everything is a series of random and bizarre scenarios merged together (described in the program as derived from stream of conscious activity.) The choreography is not so much "dance"  as movement and posturing that evokes oddity and grotesqueries. Robotic is a word that keeps springing to mind, not because the physicality itself is particularly angular or geometric, but because it feels depersonalised and aloof.  The most impressive thing about it is the dancers' - Benjamin Hancock, Lauren Langlois and Alisdair Macindoe - abilities to fully inhabit and commit to it. The challenge is not in performing steps (in fact the small sequences that are "pure movement" are the least interesting.)  It is in the postural, vocal, physical transformations of the bodies that intrigue.

Lauren Langlois, Benjamin Hancock and Alisdair Macindoe in
Keep Everything. Photo by Jeff Busby. 

Where all this goes...I'm really not sure. Keep Everything ties together through its use of props (a stage strewn with colourful felt and foam scraps) and lighting design from Ben Cisterne that situates the action in a deep, wide cube punctuated with heavy smoke effects - kinda sci-fi, kinda clubby. In the program Hamilton talks about humans' desire to organize and contextualise everything. That's his impetus for the show's actions.

Personally, I can find elements that entertain or strike a chord and I can see the deliberation and pathways at play. I can contextualize it within Hamilton's work or within the Melbourne contemporary dance scene, but as a whole work in and of itself, it's not easy to wrap up in any sort of package (and maybe it doesn't need to be.) It is more a case of individual inspired and bizarre moments that entertain executed by consistently committed dancers. For some audiences, that will be a complete journey in and of itself. For others (and I admit I fall into this category), it may feel like a bunch of interesting detours that never finds its final destination.


Click here for my review of Keep Everything in the Herald Sun on 19 June 2012.

Keep Everything
Chunky Move Studios
14 - 23 June 2012

Green Room Awards Winners

The Green Room Awards were announced today in a ceremony at the Playhouse. The dance category's winners are posted below. (Excuse the font - I pasted from the Green Room Awards website.)

It's nice to see Gideon Obarzanek's Assembly pick up accolades, as it was the last piece Obarzanek made for Chunky Move before finishing up his post as artistic director (and founder) of the company. With a cast of over 50 performers, including singers from the Victorian Opera choir, it's one of those pieces that transforms pedestrian movements into an extraordinary whole. The power of numbers - so many bodies organised together and working as a large group - has a mesmerising pull and this was well-exploited in the work.

I was really happy to see that Becky, Jodi, John won the Concept and Realisation award. This little gem made by John Jasperse (American), Melbourne girl Rebecca Hilton and Jodi Melnik (American) was my absolute highlight of the Dance Massive season (and probably the whole year.) A post-modern take on how post-modern dancers think about getting older, it's full of humour and wit and brings relevance to dance vocabulary that has the potential to be alienating and academic. Totally fantastic!

Congratulations to all the well-deserving nominees and winners. Keep up the great work!

Betty Pounder Award for Choreography: Gideon Obarzanek, Assembly (Chunky Move / Victorian Opera, presented by Melbourne Festival in association with Sydney Festival & Brisbane Festival)

Design: Toni Maticevski (Costumes), Richard Nylon (Millinery), Matthew Bird (Nest Design & Backdrop), Gavin Brown (Curtain Design) & Benjamin Cisterne (Lighting), Aviary (Phillip Adams BalletLab in association with Melbourne Festival)

Sound and Music Composition and/or Performance: TIE BETWEEN:

Cast of Assembly (Live Performance), Assembly (Chunky Move / Victorian Opera presented by Melbourne Festival in association with Sydney Festival & Brisbane Festival)

AND

Soloists and Victorian Opera Chorus & Orchestra Victoria (Live Performance), Requiem (The Australian Ballet)

Male Dancer: Luke George, Body of Work (Luke George / Jo Lloyd / Phillip Adams BalletLab in association with Melbourne Festival)

Female Dancer: Kirsty Martin, The Merry Widow (The Australian Ballet)

Ensemble: Concerto (The Australian Ballet)

Concept & Realisation: Becky, Jodi & John (Becky Hilton, Jodi Melnick & John Jesperse / John Jesperse Company and Dancehouse)

Infinity

Warumuk - In The Dark Night by Stephen Page in Infinity. Photo by AFP

The Australian Ballet started its 50th year in celebration mode with Infinity. Triple bills are always risky endeavours, as modern works are a harder sell than classics to ballet audiences. Infinity has a lot going for it. It's big names all around - Graeme Murphy, Gideon Obarzanek and Stephen Page - three of Australia's most famous choreographers, all of whom have histories with the company. Three specially commissioned musical scores accompany the pieces. While the works are not all perfect hits in and of themselves, each has plenty to like. Overall, it's an entertaining and substantial evening with plenty of appeal for a broad spectrum of dance lovers.

For me, Obarzanek's There's Definitely a Prince Involved was the highlight. A tongue in cheek deconstruction of something dear to the heart of of balletomines - Swan Lake, the work involves dancers breaking out of corps roles to ruminate on love and longing while pondering the plot and characters of the traditional ballet. It won't be everyone's cup of tea and audiences are divided on this one for sure. Chunky Move fans will be used to Obarzanek's post-modern take, but those who like to enjoy classical ballet straight may not be amused.


Click here for my review of Infinity in the Herald Sun, 27 Feburary 2012.

Infinity
24 February - 06 March 2012
State Theatre, Art Centre Melbourne


05 -25 April 2012
Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Connected

Since Chunky Move settled in Melbourne in 1998 they have premiered many different shows (mostly one a year, sometimes slightly more) and I can remember the theme and essence of every single one. Each season has been so distinctly different from the other. Choreographically they have similarities, but conceptually they are unique. There has been series of dances in night clubs, public surveys to inspire dances and most recently, engagement of high-end interactive software and lasers to create the very sophisticated Glow and Mortal Engine. There's always a bite or hook in a Chunky Move premiere. Some might call this good marketing (which it is), but it is more more than that. Chunky Move’s mission is to engage with contemporary culture - in whatever form that might be - and contemporary culture is always changing. 

Cast of Connected. Photo by Jeff Busby.

And it's not just techno and computers either - it's contemporary art of all kinds - even art that's made of mechanical materials like string, metal and plastic. 

For Connected artistic director/choreographer Gideon Obarzanek embraces a three-dimensional installation designed by American sculptor Reuben Margolin who makes large-scale undulating artworks that “attempt to combine the logic of mathematics with the sensuousness of nature.” (his words) Margolin's contribution to Connected is incredibly beautiful, with hundreds of thick white strings hanging from the ceiling. Dancers attach the ends of the strings together with oblong pieces that create a gridded canopy at the bottom of the strings. Through a pulley system and a metal, loom-like structure upstage the dancers are tied into the strings and make Margolin's artwork move back and forth, up and down by shifting their bodies forward and backward in space. 

The visuals are extremely effective - the vast whiteness of the sculpture against the earthbound bodies and the curvaceous moving of the sculpture against choreography that is often angular, rigid, and brittle. Benjamin Cisterne's lighting smartly accentuates the sculpture's geometric possibilities. The five dancers - Harriet Ritchie, Stephanie Lake, Marnie Palomares, Alisdair Macindoe and Joseph Simons - are at one with Margolin's sculpture and each other. There’s especially nice tension between Macindoe and Palomares when he is tied to the machine and she is (unattached) wilting and rising under the parachute-like base of the sculpture. (As in photo below.)

Alisdair Macindoe and Marnie Palomares in Connected.
Photo by Jeff Busby.

About half way through the work, Connected takes what feels like a totally different turn. Lake returns to stage dressed in a suit, tie and name tag and starts talking about her experiences as a gallery attendant in a museum. This leads to the others reappearing similarly dressed while recorded voices start offering more stories about being museum guards. All of a sudden we are not watching the merging of human with mechanical. We start intellectualizing the context of installation art from the perspective of involved but detached parties. 

The anecdotes are surprisingly compelling - one guard talks about keeping people 20 centimetres back from the works; a woman passes time finding typos in the titles of artworks; another man counts the floor board slats to keep his mind busy and a cleaner thinks a piece of stolen artwork is rubbish and disposes it in the dumpster.

This section of the work doesn’t physically engage with Margolin’s sculpture. In fact, the choreography shifts into simplistic walking patterns  - diagonals, straight arms moving in various angles, gesturing hands in and out of pockets. It’s rigid, it’s banal - perhaps reflecting the guards’ daily experiences. Compared to the sensuality and complexity of what has come before, it’s a visual let-down. But maybe that’s the point.

There are two very different dance works in Connected. Yet, Connected, as a theatre experience, is not disconnected. The juxtaposition is a jarring contrast, but it also makes sense. Margolin's sculpture seems to finds a way to humanize the art that the guards can only see as object. And if that's the case, it begs questions about the context for installation art. How is its relationship with the human body different than its presence in an empty room? Who is it for? What's its purpose? And where exactly does dance fit into the equation? I don't think Obarzanek or Margolin exactly know the answers themselves - and they don't need to. 

Over a decade on from their inaugural Melbourne season, Chunky Move isn't resting on tried and true material. Obarzanek and company continually inquire and explore, seeking out unique collaborations and opportunities. Excitingly, they aren't afraid to venture into new territory even though they don't know where it's going to take them. They keep their audiences (and themselves) guessing what's next. What better way to stay connected to the contemporary?

Click here to read my review of Connected in the Herald Sun, 18 March, 2011.

Connected 

Malthouse Theatre

15 - 20 March 2011

Connected - Sydney Season

 Sydney Theatre Walsh Bay, 22 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay

 10 – 14 May @ 8.00pm, and 14 May @ 2.00pm

Bookings: https://boxoffice.sydneytheatre.org.au or +612 9250 1999

Dance Massive is Coming....

The Malthouse Theatre launched its 2011 season yesterday. Along with all the great theatre that new artistic director Marion Potts has planned are four dance shows which are all part of the 2011 Dance Massive Festival. Along with Dancehouse, Arts House, and Ausdance, the Malthouse is a producer of Dance Massive. 

Dance Massive began in 2009 as a festival for Australian contemporary dance and was so successful that the plan is for a bi-annual event. Shows range from small to medium size and the artists presented are all of a very high calibre. 2009 artists included Lucy Guerin Inc, Helen Herbertson, Russell Dumas and Splintergroup as well as younger choreographers like Rogue Collective.  

Based on what's been announced so far at the Malthouse (the full Dance Massive program will be revealed in early December), the 2011 program is going to be pretty exciting - there's new work, recent work and a remount of a significant production. 

Connected. Photo by John Drysdale. 

The new work is a Chunky Move premiere called Connected. It's a collaboration with American kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin. Margolin is creating a huge sculpture of moving parts that will be attached to the five dancers. Music, lighting, sculpture and dance will be highly connected, with all elements triggering each other. 

Faker. Photo by Heidrun Lour.

In a totally different vein, Gideon Obarzanek, artistic director of Chunky Move will present his solo, Faker - more a personal expose about creating artwork than a dance piece in itself. He presented it in Sydney this year and it looks really interesting. 

In Glass by choregrapher Narelle Benjamin also has a connection to Chunky Move. Benjamin danced with the company in its early days when it first moved to Melbourne in the late 1990s to take up the post as Victoria's flagship contemporary dance company. I still remember her fiesty performance as the knife-weilding go-go dancer in Bonehead. She has worked with just about every major company in Australia as well as having success as a dance film maker. For In Glass, her first full length production, she's collaborating with award-winnning dancers Kristina Chan and Paul White. Both are phenomenoal performers, having worked extensively with Tanya Leidtke and Australian Dance Theatre, among many others. 

Amplification. Photo by Jeff Busby.

Finally - and another connection to the late 1990s -  is a remount of Phillip Adams' Amplification. I should admit here that I have a special connection to Amplification - I wrote about it in my MA back in 2000. It was not only Adams' first major work after moving back to Melbourne after a decade in New York, it was also the inaugural work for his company BalletLab, that now, over a decade on, has an extensive and extremely diverse repertoire.  

Even though Adams' dance making practice has moved in all sorts of directions since Amplification,  the work is a great example of Adams' ideas about the relationship of ballet to contemporary performance, his interest in distorting/reinventing ballet technique and his ability to zealously research a dark topic and re-fashion it into something utterly unique. 

Check out www.malthousetheatre.com.au for more details about these shows or become an e-subscriber to Dance Massive on www.dancemassive.com.au and get all the latest updates and articles about the festival. 

Dance Massive runs 15 - 27 March 2011.