City Recital Hall, Angel Place
January 2012
As part of Sydney Festival

By Elizabeth Ashley. 

Chunky Move with Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek participated in the Sydney Festival 2012 with Assembly – a work exploring the dynamics of crowds in everyday life. Obarzanek’s fascination with ‘spatial and moving patterns’ is creatively worked through on a set of steep stairs, mirroring the sloped seating of the watching audience so that we come face to face with the facets and behaviour of various crowds.

While crowds in their various shapes and forms may be an unavoidable part of modern life, Obarzanek reminds us of their intricacies, uniqueness and creative force. Assembly, as the name of the work, reflects the vision to assemble something en masse that transcends our individuality. Obarzanek’s assembly of various dancers and choristers, integrating voices and movement into a harmonious whole is the highlight of this work.

Dancers from Chunky Move collaborate with singers from the Sydney Philharmonia choirs to explore the way a crowd affects individuals as well as creating a life of its own.

Unexpectedly and refreshingly, Obarzanek does not delineate the dancers from the singers – the variety of ages, body types and ways of moving endears the audience to this ‘crowd’ and somehow includes us in the process.

As 60 performers climb the stairway, set to take their opening position, a question is nagging – “But where will the dancers dance?” Then they all start talking loudly, gesticulating as if they were all telling you their life story. It’s not until the mass separates and walks purposely in intricate and highly structured patterns up and down and across the structure that we realise the dancers are lost in the anonymity of the crowd.

Seamless integration of voice and body allows Assembly to explore the many types of crowds in modern life, from raucous football games to audience participation, to queuing, trend-following and the alienation of cityscape bustling. In this work the standout performance is no particular individual but the group entity itself.

The space is well-used and has the ability to show the depth and shape of crowds. We see the ebb and flow, creating an almost 3D effect. We no longer see the crowd as a chaotic mess but rather as one mass, constantly forming and reforming patterns as the individuals interact and disperse – an embodiment of a creative entity that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The choir must be applauded for their absolute commitment to their roles not as singers but as performers, executing phase-shifting sequences as well as rolling and slithering head-first down the stairs. Equally, the Chunky Move dancers handle the challenges of shoulder rolls and pas de deux sequences on a stairway with skilled control as well as performing percussive and resonating falls due to the pushing and shoving nature of crowds.

The combination of mass bodies in motion with voices singing in unison is a masterstroke of creative envisioning, allowing the work to capture the contradictory experience of the crowd or assembly.  The anonymity and earthbound nature of the dancing bodies is contrasted with the ethereal quality of the voices that suggest a juxtaposition of mind/matter and subjection/transcendence, as well as the themes of fragmentation and wholeness.

Assembly is an uplifting and refreshing collaboration that engages the audience, elicits laughter, spontaneous applause and recognition. Echoing a review from The Age, Assembly is “meditative, mesmerising and existential”, and extremely rewarding.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

Sydney Festival 2012
January 7-29

An explosion of exceptional theatre, dance, music and film is set to take over Sydney from January 7-29. In Australia’s largest summer festival, Sydney Festival 2012 will host 11 world premieres, 15 Australian exclusives and 14 Australian premieres, attracting up to 1 million locals and visitors. The 2012 Sydney Festival will celebrate uniquely Australian work as well as welcome companies from all over the world, using more than 25 venues across the city including Sydney Opera House, Seymour Centre, Riverside Theatres and The University of Sydney, as well as parks, laneways and city streets.

If a festival exists, in part, to hold a mirror up to its city each year, the cultural evolution of Sydney should be paralleled by the evolution of Sydney’s Festival. The 2012 Sydney Festival looks toward the horizon with a truly global summertime celebration of our shared humanity, of Australian innovation and of two dynamic communities with the potential to shape our city’s future cultural identity: Sydney’s second CBD, Parramatta, and Redfern – Australia’s ‘black capital’. Sydney Festival 2012 celebrates Sydney’s unique history and potential with Black Capital, a series of performances, seminars and exhibitions reflecting Sydney’s diverse contemporary Indigenous culture, held in Carriageworks in the heart of Redfern.

For 2012, supplementary funding from the State Government, matched by an increased commitment by Parramatta City Council, has enabled Sydney Festival to significantly expand its program in Parramatta as the focus of its activities in Western Sydney. Building on Sydney Festival’s commitment to presenting work in Western Sydney since 2003, this increased funding facilitated the Festival to present a comprehensive ten-day Festival of free and ticketed events. A feast for everyone, with free opening and closing events, the program also includes a whole host of music, theatre and cabaret in Riverside Theatres and Sydney’s newest venue, the gorgeous Idolize Spiegeltent in Prince Alfred Park.

Dancer Paul White in 'Anatomy of an Afternoon'

In celebration of Australia’s strong creative spirit, the Festival has a whole host of Australian innovators including Gideon Obarzanek, Kate Champion, William Yang, Wesley Enoch, Urban Theatre Projects, Meow Meow, Martin del Amo, Sydney University architecture students and many more.

The 2012 theatre and dance program features three giants in their fields: choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui joins forces with Damien Jalet, Antony Gormley and a company of 18 dancers and musicians to launch a swirling maelstrom of identity, ethnicity and culture with Babel; the National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly present the sweat-and-sawdust world of a boxing ring with Beautiful Burnout; and Declan Donnellan and his acclaimed company Cheek by Jowl return to Jacobean tragedy with a new production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, a violent and bloody drama of lust, vengeance and greed.

Kate Champion’s Force Majeure tells distinctly Australian stories examining the pressures of modern-day parenting with Never Did Me Any Harm; Urban Theatre Projects investigates who, exactly, has claim to our city in Buried City; and Gary Foley tells it like it is with Foley, one man’s reclaiming of his own history.

There’s more testosterone than can be poked with a stick when Thyestes storms a bloody trail to Carriageworks; a bunch of Bankstown boxers take over Belvoir’s downstairs theatre with I’m Your Man; and one of Australia’s most chilling tales, The Boys, returns to Griffin Theatre Company after its premiere 21 years ago.

Some stories find beauty in the masses, such as Gideon Obarzanek’s Assembly, with his crowds of dancers and choristers; while others examine the very small pleasures in life, like L’Effet de Serge. There are personal stories that have universal resonance, like Radio Muezzin; and Australian dancer Paul White’s nod to Nijinsky with Anatomy of an Afternoon. And then there are the universal stories that become very personal, such as Ontroerend Goed’s A History of Everything.

For the full program and tickets visit www.sydneyfestival.org.au

Top photo: Beautiful Burnout by the National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly. Photo by Gavin Evans.

Melbourne International Arts Festival
Melbourne Recital Centre
October 2011

By Grace Edwards

Chunky Move’s Assembly is Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek’s final work with the company. Produced in collaboration with the Victorian Opera, it is in one a study in the motion of crowds, a salute to the collaborative possibilities of the age-old partnership between music and dance, and a swan song for Obarzanek which marks the end of a triumphant fifteen-year era in the history of Victorian contemporary dance.

The scale of the work reflected the occasion, featuring over sixty singers and dancers performing on a giant staircase set up on the stage of the Melbourne Recital Centre. The choice of music accompanying this experiment appeared surprising. Rather than a contemporary soundscape, Assembly offered its audience a selection of unaccompanied vocal works from the plainchant of the Middle Ages to the music of late Renaissance composers Carlo Gesualdo and Tomas Luis de Victoria. The choice reflected Obarzanek’s desire to work with nothing but pure vocal sound and movement, devoid of technical special effects or wizardry.

Opening on a staircase filled with performers, the crowd launched into a million discussions, creating a wall of sound above which no individual conversations could be heard. This is the anonymity of the crowd, at once comforting and frustrating. The performers underwent a number of subsequent permutations, from navigating past each other’s bodies like pedestrians to performing simply movements in unison.

Whilst these sequences were interesting in their own right, they did not ultimately transcend their original context. There is a fine line between art through emulation and simple imitation; at times, the crowd sequences appeared to veer towards the latter, with rather literal presentations of a football shouting match, dozens of individuals talking at once, moving past each other as if walking on the street. Indeed, part of the magic of crowds is their spontaneity; the reason why people-watching can be so fascinating. Simply transferring such experiences to the stage stripped these moments of their interest whilst offering little as replacement. 

The length of the opening also foreshadowed what would prove to be the generally static pace of this work. Lacking a sense of progression towards any sort of climax, Assembly remained somewhat cold and abstracted throughout on more than one occasion, causing one to wonder where it was all leading.

Performers Harriet Ritchie and Sara Black were, as always it seems, standouts – dynamic agents amidst the throng of performers, throwing themselves across the merciless staircase with abandon whilst maintaining masterful control of their bodies. As an ensemble, the dancers impressed with their dynamism and commitment to the work. The singers were equally impressive in their vocal clarity, their voice projecting beautifully across the auditorium amidst the sounds of movement onstage.

The most interesting sequence was that in which the crowd followed individual performers to the furthest points of the set, flocking like sheep to engulf those who dared stand out. The music echoed this theme at many points in the work with a single voice piercing the auditorium before being subsumed by other voices in a beautiful wall of sound. These aspects perhaps lit a path towards a more transformative approach to crowd behavior.

Whilst this was not Chunky Move’s strongest work of recent years, the risk-taking, collaborative approach of Assembly makes it a fitting tribute to Obarzanek; a contemporary dance icon who has consistently stayed one step ahead of the crowd.

Photo: Assembly in rehearsal. Photo by Jeff Busby

The 2011 Melbourne International Arts Festival brings dance, theatre, art, opera and film to Melbourne from October 6 to 22. A truly international Festival, it features major presentations by visiting artists from countries including Russia, India, Sudan, Indonesia, Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the People’s Republic of China, Iraq, Lithuania, Ireland, South Africa, Israel, Syria and Ukraine.

The Festival examines what it is that unites us across cultures, and includes works that celebrate what can be achieved through unity, through call-to-action, through protest and politics, and through assembly of peoples.

“This year’s program is the most pan-cultural I’ve had the privilege to direct, and celebrates the ‘live’ experience,” says Artistic Director, Brett Sheehy.

Chunky Move, Assembly. Photo by Jeff Busby

This year’s festival includes six unique dance works, including the world premiere of Assembly by Chunky Move and the Victorian Opera.  One of our greatest choreographers, Gideon Obarzanek, presents his final work as head of Chunky Move in an ambitious collaboration with Victorian Opera. Devised by Obarzanek in partnership with Victorian Opera Music Director Richard Gill, Assembly investigates the enigmatic motion of crowds. Integrating dance with theatrical and operatic performance, this grand piece involves over sixty performers on stage, with the entire cast choreographed into an awesome mixture of movement and voice.

Phillip Adams also presents a world premiere with Aviary, A Suite for the Bird with his company BalletLab. A fusion of feathers, flight and fantasy, Aviary imagines a jungle paradise of exotic birds, brought to life by BalletLab Artistic Director Phillip Adams, who both directs and performs, with six exquisite dancers. Costumes are by acclaimed Australian fashion designer Toni Maticevski, with plumage designed by iconic Melbourne milliner Richard Nylon.

Political Mother. Photo by Gabriele Zucca

After his astonishing Australian debut at the 2009 Festival, the much feted Hofesh Shechter returns with his first full-length work, the critically acclaimed Political Mother.  A powerhouse performance that meshes traditional Jewish folk dance with a jackbooted live soundtrack of military drums and electric guitars, Political Mother finds Shechter at his most innovative and impassioned. Over the course of 70 minutes, Shechter’s dancers lurch through the authoritarian nightmares of recent human history.

In an Australian premiere, Jecko Siompo and Jecko’s Dance present We Came from the East. First you hear the noises, a cacophonous array of yelps emerging from the blackness. And then the bodies appear, contorted and animalistic, folded backwards and leaping toward the ceiling with bestial vigour. It’s a long way from breakdancing, yet it seems so familiar.  Could it be true? Could hip-hop really have come from Indonesia? This is the question mischievously posed by Jecko Siompo in We Came from the East. Siompo conjures up a furious display of the apparently indelible links between traditional Papuan dance and contemporary hip-hop.

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think. Critically acclaimed Australian dancer, director and choreographer, Byron Perry explores the concept of a performance work in constant flux in his second full-length dance work Double Think. A rhetorical examination of the illusion of opposition, Double Think creates a constantly evolving landscape of relativity – a place where actions and statements serve double functions and characters create and derail trains of thought simultaneously. One tall man and one short woman make imperfect sense as they shed some dark on a light subject in a complex world of simple objects.

In a fun addition to the dance program, Strut & Fret will present Tom Tom Crew who smash together acrobatics, hip-hop and percussion to create an entertaining, adrenaline-fuelled circus show for the 21st century. From the first bass drum kick to the hair-raising, acrobatic finale, the Tom Tom Crew deliver a show that grabs you and doesn’t let go. The pulsing energy of hip-hop meets the raw physicality of acrobatics in an astounding mash-up of gravity-defying manoeuvres, astonishing beat-boxing and breakdancing, improbable contortion and energetic drumming.

To get your tickets and find out more visit www.melbournefestival.com.au

Top photo: Aviary by BalletLab