What happens to abandoned ideas that are brought back to life, and into the same present?
When arbitrary flashes of half-forms are spun together in one universe, where everything is kept, and nothing is edited?
Within the confines of human understanding, could we make sense of, or even accept, a randomised past without the need to create and chronologise a historical narrative?
This creative dilemma was the nexus for director and choreographer Antony Hamilton’s idiosyncratic Keep Everything. With the realisation that we human beings must organise and contextualise a sequence of events to make meaning of our surroundings, there is a sense of terror in the road that lies ahead: we will continue to construct a personalised cut-out of the universe, grasping at numbers, codes, and patterns; creating emotions and meaning to make sense of the now as it waterfalls into the past – with one eye constantly behind us.
But Hamilton’s concern manifests not entirely in terror. At often times, Keep Everything‘s performers Benjamin Hancock, Lauren Langlois, and Alisdair Macindoe master the comedy of the absurd. This self–aware narrative loosely maps the evolution, and possible devolution of the human being, and their bodies follow in disoriented obedience. Language appears, disappears, develops, and retracts again. The spoken aspects of the performance are playful, with suitably droll regurgitations of everyday dialogue (in a specifically Australian rhetoric) dissolving into repetitive noise, mirroring the technology that rises around them. And although the choreography becomes rigid and more mechanical, there is a decidedly detached looseness to their bodies. The internalisation of machine and technology makes the comment: when does post-human begin?
A complement to Hamilton’s vision is the sensory work of the sound, lighting, and AV team: Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes (better known as The Presets), Benjamin Cisterne, and Robin Fox respectively. The stark white stage, littered with tiny foam cut outs which are both human artefact and trash pile, are coloured in two hues: warm, fleshy pastels on one side of stage, and electronic darks on the other. As the narrative changes, so does the pulse of the soundtrack’s bass and textural density. The light flashes between hospital-bare to complete deprivation. There are moments the audience is immersed in the same disorienting, deprived, visual environment as the performers. You are left a little shaken.
Hancock, Langlois, and Macindoe’s perfomances are physically and psychologically demanding. Langlois’ performance is particularly impressive, moving from mother, lover, dog, and baby far too seamlessly.
Keep Everything tours in Hobart for two more nights, and nationally until August 24th, 2014. This is highly innovative, contemporary dance.
WHAT: Chunky Move’s Keep Everything
WHEN: Wednesday 6 August – Saturday 9 August 2014
WHERE: Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart
TICKETS: Adult $30 +BF | Concession $20 + BF
MORE INFO HERE