YOU, BEAUTY
Chunky Move
Immigration Museum, Melbourne
May 31-June 16
ARKADIA
Melanie Lane
The Substation, West Melbourne
June 5-8
This year’s RISING festival, a winter contemporary arts festival that has grown up in Melbourne over the past few years, could be the most edgy yet for dance, with immersive pieces in unusual performance spaces reigning supreme.
Chunky Move’s You, Beauty is an audacious, kinetic exploration of the visceral language of dance, and in this latest offering, the Melbourne-based company continues to redefine the boundaries of contemporary performance. Under the inventive direction of Antony Hamilton, You Beauty confronts the audience with a raw and pulsating energy, both primal and modern.
The choreography is an intricate mix of sharp, angular movements interwoven with fluid, water-like transitions. The dancers, Samakshi Sidhu and Enzo Nazario, embody this tension and harmony with astuteness.
Hamilton’s ability to combine rigidity and grace results in spectacle that is both disquieting and beautiful.
The set design is a minimalistic canvas, allowing the dancers’ bodies to paint vivid strokes across the stage. The stark lighting casts dramatic shadows, creating a chiaroscuro effect that enhances the sense of depth and movement. It’s a visual feast that compels the audience to not just see but to feel the physicality of the performers.
Sound plays a crucial role in You, Beauty. The score, a blend of electronic and organic sounds, mirrors the choreography's rhythm: at times haunting, at times electrifying, the music is a heartbeat that drives the performance forward, pulling the audience into its relentless cadence.
The dancers’ interactions are charged with a palpable intensity, their every movement profuse with meaning, be it in isolation or in contact.
Staged in the Immigration Museum, You, Beauty is not just a dance performance: it is an immersive experience that challenges and engulfs. It demands the audience’s full attention. Chunky Move has once again proven its prowess in pushing the envelope of contemporary dance, crafting a piece that is as intellectually stimulating as it is viscerally affecting.
Antony Hamilton and Chunky Move have delivered a performance that is strikingly original, unapologetically intense and undeniably beautiful.
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Arkadia is a spellbinding new choreography by Melanie Lane, held at West Melbourne’s The Substation. The setting and the choreography have an ethereal dimension. The lines between reality and illusion blur. With a masterful fusion of contemporary dance and surrealist aesthetics, Lane constructs a narrative that is as evocative as it is elusive, echoing the timeless quest for some kind of paradise or utopia.
The performance unfolds within the high vaulted ceilings and brick walls of the venue, a minimalist yet transformative set, where the dancers’ fluid movements evoke a sense of both longing and transcendence. Lane's choreography is a testament to her keen understanding of human emotion and the ineffable nature of the subconscious.
The soundscape, an integral companion to the visual narrative, oscillates between haunting melodies and pulsating rhythms, mirroring the dancers' internal and external journeys. It is this symbiosis between sound and movement that elevates Arkadia from a mere performance to an immersive experience.
In Arkadia, Lane deftly explores themes of paradise and disillusionment, inviting the audience to reflect on their own perceptions of perfection and escape. The dancers, through their impeccable technique and expressive countenances, embody the tension between hope and despair, creating a poignant commentary on the human condition.
Arkadia feels like a poetic odyssey, a dance that speaks the language of dreams. The rich layers of symbolism lend the performance to reconsideration afterwards. It is another successfully immersive dance piece in this year’s RISING program, which has been stimulating and vibrant.
- LEILA LOIS