Where man meets machine
Robotic orchestra provides soundtrack as Aussie dancers test the limits of their bodies
Two dancers and a percussion orchestra of 64 tiny robotic instruments are the active ingredients in an extraordinary work called Meeting, on view this week at the Berkeley Street Theatre.
Beyond what’s visible and audible, Meeting poses bigger questions about human agency and free will. Just how different are the human bodies that respond to a relentless polyrhythmic tattoo from the machines generating those beats? Are we not also automatons?
Meeting is choreographed by Melbourne-based Antony Hamilton, a respected dance experimenter and currently a resident artist at Dancemakers. The Toronto company will present Natural Orders, a new Hamilton work made for local dancers, as part of this summer’s Luminato Festival.
For Meeting, Hamilton collaborated with fellow Australian dancer Alisdair Macindoe who, with a parallel career as sound designer and selftaught instrument maker, is responsible for the small, radio-signal activated boxes with hinged pencil-hammers that strike the ground or, later in Meeting, other surfaces.
Although Hamilton studied a range of dance styles, including ballet, he comes from a B-boy background, which no doubt accounts for the quasi-popping vocabulary of Meeting. Macindoe also comes from an eclectic training background that includes ballet and modern dance. The two men perform the 50-minute work in what can only be described as a tour de force of speed, precision, memory and concentration.
“It’s mentally and physically exhausting,” admits Hamilton. “It demands intense focus.”
Dance happens in space and time, and the way the latter is measured is at the core of most choreographic systems. In Meeting, Hamilton takes the convention of counts, used by dancers to co-ordinate movement and sound, and pushes it into new territory.
The distinction usually observed between dancer and music dissolves as the sounds of the robotic instruments become the electronic impulses driving the dancers’ moves.
“The whole piece has a meter but no regular time signature.” Hamilton explains. “Part of the tension of the work is how fragile it is, how easily it can fail. Things can and do go wrong.”
Meeting is part of Spotlight Australia, the latest in a series of biennial festivals during which Canadian Stage focuses attention on multidisciplinary performance from a particular country.
Beyond the actual performances it includes workshops, panels and events designed to foster cultural exchange.
The chosen artists, many making their Toronto or sometimes Canadian debuts, are often at the cutting edge of their field. Previous festivals have featured Italy (2011), Japan (2013) and South Africa (2015).
Matthew Jocelyn, Canadian Stage’s artistic and general director, explains that he had always hoped to put a spotlight on Australia but decided Canada’s sesquicentennial was ideal timing because of the obvious parallels between the development of the two former British colonies — not least the continuing issue of the treatment of their indigenous inhabitants.
“It lets us look at another country that has also experienced waves of European colonizers and immigrants resulting in a similar ethnic mix,” says Jocelyn.
Underlining the parallels in stark fashion, Spotlight Australia began in late March with Jack Charles v. The Crown, the autobiographical tale of Aboriginal elder and artist Uncle Jack Charles, whose story echoes that of Canadian First Nations children wrenched from their homes.
Meeting is not similarly freighted but is a reminder that Australia, perceived as a formidably faraway place in the days before jet travel and electronic communication, is very much plugged into international currents of experimental dance and physical theatre.
“It’s a fascinating test of the limits of what a physical body is capable of doing,” Jocelyn observes. “The notion of ‘meeting’ resonates on so many levels.”
Running concurrently is Melbourne-based Tamara Saulwick’s Endings, which along with interview-derived personal stories deploys portable turntables, audio tape players and live electroacoustic music in a “meditation on cycles and the endings of things.”
The festival winds up in early May with the return of Brisbane’s Circa, a big hit here in 2014, with the troupe’s unconventional, acrobatics-meets-baroque-opera riff on Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses.
Meeting is at Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, 26 Berkeley St., April 26-30; canadianstage.com or 416368-3110.
“Part of the tension of the work is how fragile it is, how easily it can fail.”
ANTONY HAMILTON CHOREOGRAPHER