Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne.
27 Feb 2025.
Techno paganism seems to beat at the cyborg heart of Chunky Move’s maximalist sci-fi vision of a mechanically augmented future. Yet, for all the ‘marching of the machines’, the grit of the primitive and the blood of the tribe remain. Thus, U>N>I>T>E>D is both foreboding and hopeful; a tale at once cautionary and transcendent.
Created for Melbourne’s Asia TOPA festival, U>N>I>T>E>D brings Australian and Indonesian artists together in a fictive universe of crab-like prosthetics, ever-present tech and skeletal industrial mire. Scored by the pulverising electronica of Gabber Modus Operandi, it fizzes with menace before morphing into a denouement of refusal and liberation.
Chunky Move AD, Antony Hamilton, taps veins of the droid-like and the ceremonial. The choreography shifts between hyper-articulation and fluidity, always appearing to be at the service of a broad brush narrative. Meanwhile, the six dancers rotate through a range of costumes (extra limbs) and grapple with various set structures. They wield, climb and tether. As such, U>N>I>T>E>D scans as a collision of movement based theatre and clan ritual.
With so many elements, there is an inevitable overload, intentional or otherwise. Production predominates, from the intricate illuminated costumes of Future Loundry to the elaborate insectoid gadgets of Creature Technology Co. Add Benjamin Cisterne’s detailed lighting design into the mix and you have a giddying, split focus spectacle.
The embedded challenge is inescapable. Overwhelm us with the code, the remorseless grind of zeroes and ones, and see if we can stay in touch with the organic. With the ineffable and sublime. Indeed, where will our gaze fall when confronted with a disorienting array? What, in the end, will command our attention and drive our choices?
If U>N>I>T>E>D feels bleak at times, it leaves us uplifted. The final act is one of assertion — a shared human spirit summiting the machine mountain. As if to make this clear, brutal grindcore noise gives way to euphoric, almost melodic trance, and exoskeletons are duly shed.
This is not an easy work. Hamilton and Co have synthesised a dense alloy of cyberpunk, future-noir and tribal spirituality. Its hard metallic surface keeps you at a certain distance, and its often robotic choreography feels frazzled and desperate, as though the dancers were being overpowered. Little more than athletic marionettes.
But…take a breath…let if wash over you and…far from drowning, you may well unearth something resembling clarity.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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