Inspired by ever-changing contemporary culture, the Melbourne, Australia-based contemporary dance company Chunky Move has always challenged conventional genres of dance. Vibrant and unpredictable movements, often infused with motion tracking and projection technology, replace the usual routine of pliés and chassés.
This Friday, Chunky Move will return to Reynolds Industries Theater through Duke Performances to present Connected, an hour-long performance that depicts the interactive relationship between the human body and the machine. This ensemble is the product of a collaboration between Chunky Move director Gideon Obarzanek and California sculpture artist Reuben Margolin.
“What gets me excited about their work is that they combine this incredible imagination around visual effects, sound and sight and, in this case, kinetic sculpture,” said Thomas DeFrantz, a joint professor of African & African American studies and dance.
Connected features Margolin’s sculptural marvel, which was built from wood, recycled plastic, paper and steel and resembles natural waveforms embodying kinetic movement. The sculpture suspends over the stage in a looming manner by hundreds of fine wires that are also attached to the dancers themselves. Throughout the performance, as the dancers move, the sculpture will also move and bend in tandem with them.
“Chunky Move is a leader in dance and technology that has created astonishing work aligning dance with emerging technology, computer processing and stagecraft with performance,” DeFrantz said. “[In Connected], you can see both the moving body and the combination with technology and kinetic sculpture.”
Connected’s main feature is unconventional movement, in keeping with the technical experimentation of Chunky Move’s past productions. In 2005, the company performed Tense Dave at the American Dance Festival (ADF); the piece employs a constantly revolving stage, illustrating the journey of Dave’s paranoia, fear and fantasy.
ADF co-director Jodee Nimerichter, who brought Tense Dave to Duke and Durham, said that Chunky Move offers a freshness that audiences have never experienced before.
“Very rarely do we place something on our program through watching just a video,” Nimerichter said. “But I put in the DVD [of Tense Dave] and I was captivated immediately, and I had to have it that season.”
Glow, another of Chunky Move’s prominent works, features a collaboration with software engineer Frieder Weiss. In the piece, the dancers move under the glow of a video tracking system. A digital landscape is constructed in real time as the dancers move, meshing the world of the body and media into one.
Chunky Move’s grounding in innovative movement technology reflects the impact of the digital era on artistic expression. DeFrantz teaches Dance 144, entitled “Performance and Technology,” where students explore, in a workshop setting, the ways in which technologies like robots, media and computer interfaces are embedded within productions similar to those of Chunky Move. The class is one example of a growing trend: utilizing technology and media in the arts. Duke Performances has been working to harness these forward-thinking works to engage students and the Duke community in a non-traditional manner.
“We’re trying to lead the conversation rather than offer a season of folks’ greatest hits,” Director of Duke Performances Aaron Greenwald said. “We strive to have extra performance engagements of a variety of scope and type so that the broader community has more insight to the artists we bring here.”
Chunky Move Dance Company will present Connected this Friday at 8 p.m. in Reynolds Industries Theater. Tickets are available through the Duke Performances website.
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