Chunky Move’s Keep Everything
InReview
“What are ya thinking about?” The challenge is set and this is not a rhetorical question – comfortable audiences are about to be unsettled as contemporary meets confronting. Keep Everything is a whole body experience!
Melbourne-based performance company Chunky Move mashes movement with voice with technology and for 60 minutes our world evolves, devolves and revolves before us in a chaos that is disorderly ordered.
It has been two years since the premiere of Antony Hamilton’s Keep Everything, a work which questions whether humans can every truly find contentment in the present, and the performance at Adelaide’s AC Arts theatre clearly shows us why he is so highly regarded as a choreography and director.
This portrait of humanity has hints of the post-apocalyptic with a creative splash of inevitability; the human condition is profiled unapologetically.
In some regards, this is a reunion of sorts, with core players the rider for a national tour. On stage, the original cast members – Benjamin Hancock, Alisdair Macindoe and Lauren Langlois – are lithe, powerful and exquisite; this is a metamorphosis of movement. Behind the scenes, Nick Roux (system designs) and Benjamin Cisterne (lighting design) provide a presence that is an identity of its own.
As a reflection of life, there’s space, form, chaos, substance and oblivion, and Hamilton openly taunts: Where are we now?
Joint composers Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes (of The Presets) have nurtured sounds that resonate and stimulate; there is a synchronicity with the visuals that is real.
Thanks to this Performing Lines production, presented by Vitalstatistix and Mobile States, we are privy to a junkyard of humanity that showcases the power of the absurd and the ingenuity of the mundane.
The AC Arts is a fitting venue and the stark space, dominated symbolically by a teardrop of detritus, is a long way from boring. This is replicated by the versatility of the performers, who use space of stage and time to entice, engage and enlighten. Clearly, there is nothing better than the real thing. So here we are … So human… yeah.
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Chunky Move is presenting Keep Everything at the AC Arts Main Theatre in Light Square until July 19 ahead of a national tour next month. Click here to read InDaily’s interview with choreographer Antony Hamilton about the origins of the work.
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