Glow
Michael Fowler Centre, Renouf Foyer, Wellington
07/03/2008 - 09/03/2008
New Zealand International Arts Festival
Production Details
A lone dancer in a digital universe is illuminated on stage in an explosion of flashing light, heralding the sensual, expressive journey of Chunky Move’s Glow.
n
Glow is a fluid and perfectly synchronised relationship between organic being and video world, an intense and concise experience. On a stage that is alternately white or black, mutable or grid-like projections play around, over and with the dancer, triggered in real time by her movements. A corona surrounding her body emits constellations of light as limbs elongate; rods of fluorescent beams are bisected, causing undulations and wave patterns.
Known for their distinct and unpredictable brand of genre-defying dance, Chunky Move’s latest work is a state-of-the-art collaboration between Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and software wunderkind Frieder Weiß.
No two performances of Glow are the same, as if each time an emotional landscape is created all over again. Glow is the perfect length to see before or after another show.
LATECOMERS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 10
Chunky Move is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria, Department of Premier and Cabinet, and the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Event Dates
7 Mar (Fri): 6:00pm, 7:00pm & 8:00pm
8 Mar (Sat): 3:00pm, 4:00pm, 5:00pm & 6:00pm
9 Mar (Sun): 3:00pm, 4:00pm, 5:00pm & 6:00pm
Pricing (excl. service fees)
GA $25.00
FR $22.50
Child GA $15.00
Duration: 30 mins
Venue Details: Renouf Foyer, Michael Fowler Centre
30 mins
Decoratively interesting sketch
Review by Lyne Pringle 10th Mar 2008
First up I would like to say that it was very rude to not let us know who the dancer was in this performance. There is a pool of three dancers listed in the programme. An announcement would sort this out but I heard that even after several audience members requested this, throughout the season the dancer, without whom there would be nothing to see, remained anonymous.
Sara Black, as I found out later, was heroic and moved with clarity and precision through the mostly earthbound and demanding choreography as black and white graphics shimmered around her. It’s a duet really, between dancer and computer programmer.
In the ceiling is an infrared camera tracing system using motion capture software to manufacture graphics which are shone back onto a white square on the floor that the dancer squeals, grunts, contorts, bares her teeth and squirms upon.
We are taken through a series of investigations with these graphics upon convoluted folding movements as the piece builds to a crescendo. Following a narrative of sorts where the dancer as a creature with illusory limits to her body is struggling to survive in or escape from this imposed habitat.
Eventually she does escape leaving blots on the floor that become shadows to haunt her in the conclusion of the work.
There was a moment watching this 30 minute ‘choreographic essay’ when I felt transported back to the experiments with elastic bands and stretch lycra that informed the early work of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis: these dances evoked the WOW! factor in the 1970s.
I wonder where this interface between specially developed video software and a choreographed living breathing human will take us 30 years from now.
Presently it is in sketch form and decoratively interesting up to a point. I am interested in how it can be used theatrically, perhaps in a larger work to support dramaturgical logic.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments