A rare feat in dance performance: the technology becomes more artistically important than the dancers. Mortal Engine was a ground breaking, earth shaking, game changing performance in modern dance; largely in part to the most sophisticated show control system ever deployed at the time, and the beautifully rendered scenes and choreography that made use of technology in a completely new way. Mortal Engine alters the soul.
Chunky Move
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| Mortal Engine by Chunky Move - 2008 |
Chunky Move is an Australian Dance Company local to Melbourne and
founded in 1995 by Gideon Obarzanek, its first choreographer. They
operate on a model of "creative porosity" meaning that they are not an
ensemble, but rather that creative people and ideas move through through
them. in 2012 Anouk van Dijk took over as artistic director and
choreographer and produced Act of Now which won Best New Major Work in
the Melbourne Theatre Festival. Van Dijk's movement system is known as
Countertechnique. Countertechnique is described by Van Dijk: "By
continuously and sequentially directing and counter directing parts
of the body through space, Countertechnique allows the moving dancer to
work with an ever-changing dynamic balance. This dynamic balance reduces
the pressure on the overall body structure and can be changed at any
given moment.
Mortal Engine - 2008
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| Mortal Engine by Chunky Move - 2008 |
What is different about
Mortal Engine was the mature way with which show control technology was deployed. Set on a white raked stage, the movements of the dancers were monitored with Infared Cameras and motion sensors and used to drive the audio, video, and laser environment in real time. By doing this, the dancers were able to paint the stage with video projects and with shadow. It is a reverse way of thinking; we usually think about controlling where the illumination will be, whereas in this production, the designers thought about where the darkness would be. This is a very post-modern concept: that the environment is subjective to the individual. We see how the imaginative world painted on the stage with light transforms and responds to the individual dancer.
Gideon Obarzaneks on the technology behind
Glow and
Mortal Engine in his own words:
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