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Dance Massive 2009


 Da Contents H2

dance massive
March 15 2009
knowing pop
carl nilsson-polias: luke george, lifesize

March 14 2009
ensemble power
carl nilsson-polias: rogue: a volume problem, the counting, puck


simultaneities
virginia baxter: rogue: a volume problem, the counting, puck

March 13 2009
inner-scapes
carl nilsson-polias: splintergroup, lawn

March 12 2009
nothing hidden, much gained
carl nilsson-polias: lucy guerin inc, untrained

dance massive
reality dance
keith gallasch: lucy guerin inc, untrained


talking australian dance internationally
virginia baxter: ausdance, international dance massive delegation day

dance massive
March 11 2009
18 minutes in another town
virginia baxter: helen herbertson & ben cobham, morphia series


dancing the cosmic murmur
jana perkovic: shelley lasica, vianne

March 10 2009
dance party art
keith gallasch: 180 seconds in (disco) heaven or in hell

March 10 2009
passing strange
keith gallasch: jo lloyd's melbourne spawned a monster

dance massive
March 9 2009
horror stretch
jana perkovic: splintergroup, roadkill


March 8 2009
in bed with a mortal engine
keith gallasch: chunky move's mortal engine

limina, or saying yes to no
jana perkovic: michaela pegum, limina; and the fondue set

who’s zooming who?
virginia baxter: chunky move, mortal engine

March 7 2009
rabbits down the hole
tony reck: the fondue set's no success like failure

suspending the audience
keith gallasch: splintergroup in roadkill

the return of the super-marionette
jana perkovic: chunky move's mortal engine

words for the time being
virginia baxter: russell dumas, huit à huit—dance for the time being

March 5 2009
lateral intimacies
jana perkovic: shannon bott & simon ellis' inert

March 3 2009
after glow
keith gallasch talks with chunky move’s gideon obarzanek

critical mass
virginia baxter: melbourne’s dance massive

engineering the arts
kate warren talks with arts problem solver frieder weiss

nothing to lose
keith gallasch: the fondue set’s no success like failure

worlds within
philipa rothfield: shelley lasica’s vianne

 

Lee Serle, Mortal Engine Lee Serle, Mortal Engine
photo Andrew Curtis
THERE’S A MOMENT TOWARDS THE END OF MORTAL ENGINE WHEN A MALE DANCER REACHES OUT TO THE ENORMOUS ‘WALLS’ CREATED BY ROBIN FOX’S LASER PROJECTION AND APPEARS TO BE HOLDING THEM APART. IT INDUCES AN EXCITED ‘WOW!’ IN THE AUDIENCE AROUND US.

Throughout the 40 minutes preceding this moment, we have watched much more astonishing feats of technological interaction created in the fruitful collaboration between Gideon Obarzanek and his dancers with Fox and German new media artist, Frieder Weiss. Just when you think you’ve seen all it can do, it surprises once more. But the engagement of the audience in those first 40 minutes appears more passively appreciative.

In Mortal Engine, the Chunky Move dancers move at full stretch. In fact, I’d be surprised if at the end of all the touring they have in the pipeline, they haven’t grown a few inches. These extensions of leg and arm are required to gain maximum effect from the interactive projections that follow the dancers wherever they move. And because the stage is at a steep rake, to show the feats of light at their best the dancers are often splayed on the floor face down, crawling, rolling, merging into piles of bodies or shadowy shapes that might be animal or vegetable. There’s a whole sequence in which the electronics take centrestage and dance to their own music.

The floor pieces are interspersed with standing sequences in which dancers in twos and occasional threes perform against sections of the floor that rise to vertical. Now the bodies are identifiably human, and for the first time, we see their faces. But even now they appear as if unconscious, asleep with eyes open. Here the interaction between the dancers and the symbiotic technology perhaps becomes more evident to informed sections of the audience though there’s a sense that for many, what’s happening is a mystery. A couple emerges, their movement enhanced by a dazzling array of video fields some accompanied by sound, all of this manipulated by the dancers themselves. But equally, this might be interpreted as a couple pinned down in some technological nightmare not of their making. At another point the couple shift position against a white background, their grey shadows lumbering behind them to what sounds like the rumble of the Earth moving at its core. Though Gideon Obarzanek has deliberately opted for a world in which the line is blurry, it occurred to me, especially on this second viewing of Mortal Engine, that to engage with this work fully, the audience could do with a dramaturgical hook that makes it clearer just who’s zooming who.

So while images dazzle, the strength and prowess of the dancers impresses mightily, we watch in silent awe and wait until the slightly cheesy laser sequence for our moment of zen, our real engagement with the interaction that’s occurring in this work. The first 40 minutes reveals a flat, ominous world in which human and ‘other’ beings are mysteriously moving and being moved or colonized. In the vertical world, the inhabitants are asleep, every move exaggerated by the light and sound that surround them. Nothing in the scenario hints at the reality of the performer-technology relationship. Only at the end, do we get the matching gesture we’ve been craving, the sense of human agency intervening in the technological landscape, taking control of it however fleetingly and with this moment comes the ‘wow.’


Chunky Move, Mortal Engine, direction, choreography Gideon Obarzanek, performers Kristy Ayre, Sara Black, Amber Haines, Antony Hamilton, Marnie Palomares, Lee Serle, James Shannon, Adam Synnott, Charmene Yap, interactive system design Frieder Weiss, laser & sound art Robin Fox, composer Ben Frost, set design Richard Dinnen, Gideon Obarzanek, lighting design Damien Cooper, costume designer Paula Levis; Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, Mar 4-8; Dance Massive, Mar 3-15

© Virginia Baxter; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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