At last Melbourne audiences will get to enjoy a new work from Australian Dance Theatre. Proximity is a cross-disciplinary piece marrying video and dance to explore the need for emotional connection. Isn’t it somehow contradictory to employ technology to explore human feelings? Not so, according to Stewart. “Video serves the idea of the piece. The concept is to do with our connection with each other. There is an emotional aspect to it. There’s no story or narrative but it isn’t simply an abstraction, it’s not a dry essay – we create an emotional world. Proximity incorporates video in a meaningful way, we use video as something greater than just an effect in creating a state of emotional meaningfulness, there is no sense of video tricks. The dance creates the sense of the necessity of emotional connection and main driver is the physical.”
Proximity has nine dancers on stage videoing each other and the audience can watch the dance on large screens upstage. Will people know where to look? “I’ve spoken to various people about this,” says Stewart. “It’s different for everyone. Some people are more focussed on the screen, some on the dancers. They shift between the two, looking at dancers or the videoing. The screen and the live dancers form one system – they’re not fighting against each other. And the audience is capable of assimilating the two modes.”
Proximity is inspired by the way our brains work in creating neural maps of our experiences. “Proximity suggests a sense of space, closeness, distance,” explains Stewart. “In our brains neuro maps form to incorporate a new system. It’s an interesting starting point for a piece. The video effects become metaphors for this phenomenon.” The balance of technology and physical movement is something Stewart has paid particular attention to. “Sometimes there is dance with no video. It’s about the inter-relatedness of dancers. Proximity tries to create a balance between the body and technology, to work in a dialogue for the two media. The moments of break from the video reassert the power of the body as a site where meaning is made. Working with technology and dance and getting the imagery and balance right is the big challenge. There are always limitations as to what you can do and the choreography has to serve the visual imagery to create most effective interaction – you want a degree of sophistication in what the bodies are doing: a simple move may look great on screen but the choreography by dancers on stage can be a bit simplistic. You always win something and lose something with technology.”
Proximity had its beginnings in the ADT show Held, when Stewart worked with acclaimed New York photographer Lois Greenfield. “She’s the best known dance photographer,” he notes. “She took live photos in Held. The choreography was punctuated by photographs live on screen. I wanted to make another piece where dancers photograph each other but instead of stills we use video to explore ideas from neuroscience about how we perceive the world and connect with each other from an emotional point of view.”
The work of Thomas Pachoud, a French video engineer and computer programmer, informs much of Proximity. “He’s a coder, a programmer, he knows algorithms and technical aspects; I asked him to consider an investigation with Australian Dance Theatre in creative development of a show,” notes Stewart. Describing Pachoud’s work, Stewart says it is “a palette of sublime video effects that form the fundamental materials of Proximity in a seamless relationship with the dancers.”
Is there a suggestion of objectification of the dancers having them videoing each other? “The work does address the gaze,” Stewart says. “Looking, observance, voyeurism, but the dancers are swapping roles, being the subject of the gaze, and the person gazing. The dancers all share that role very fluently – there isn’t a sense of a power differential between performers. The work isn’t talking about power in that way, it’s more drawing attention to the state of being observed, being looked at, but it’s not a commentary on that, it’s more about differentiating the individuals. They do work together to create a unifying whole – but they’re not sublimating their individuality – that is really important. With ADT there is always a sense of individual dancers with their own personalities and presences.”
Stewart says the dancers like the challenge of working with technology. “They enjoy the collaboration, discovering new pathways to different understanding of space and bodies; it’s a pleasurable disruption to a new way of thinking, to their usual way of working.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
