Hip hop fusion

Melbourne hip hop dancer Efren Pamilacan Jr is one of a force of three artists bringing 9Dimes: You + The Universe to the Arts Centre Melbourne from May 18 to19.

Co-director, dance maker and producer Pamilacan is an accomplished hip-hop dancer, born in Melbourne with Filipino cultural heritage. His achievements include City Sessions, a Melbourne dance competition; Nice Fest, an international performing arts festival, and Factory Reset, a collaborative multimedia performance art piece performed at Big West Festival. In 2015, Pamilacan was honoured with the Peter McPhee Student Award for his work for MIXMIX Asia – a creative arts program that supports youth organisations in the Philippines.

He is teaming up with musician and producer Jason Ng, a Melbourne-based musician and Monash University academic. His contemporary musical works have featured in Factory Reset and at events including Planet Rock, City Cessions, Cypher Culture and Nice Fest. In his research, Ng, a PhD candidate, focuses closely on identity, culture and communications in hip-hop as a mode of cultural exchange and entrepreneurship across the Asia-Pacific region.

The third member of the trio is Jobe Williams, otherwise known by his intermedia moniker HYPER REELIST. He is an audio and multimedia creative and technologist based in Melbourne. His interdisciplinary practice is focused on new-media explorations with light and sound in the form of audio visual installations, sculptures and performances. His recent work includes: LED sculpture HELIXIS, commissioned for the award-winning inaugural Sydney-based music festival Soft Centre; a LED animation display inside Arts Centre Melbourne’s Australian Music Vault; The Midnight Special, an audio-visual light show inside a bus at Strawberry Fields Festival, and a custom stage design for the launch of renowned music blog Stoney Roads’ new festival, Formations.

9 Dimes fuses urban and contemporary dance performed by a cast of multicultural dancers, holographic 3D overlays and a "mind-expanding" soundtrack by Jason Ng. Putting relationships, identity and mortality under the microscope, the production "aims to refract the poetry of everyday living through the lens of space-time theory".

“We all want to find our place in the universe. We’re connected in that way," says Pamilacan.

Bookings: here.