SPOTLIGHT

<< Back to SPOTLIGHT Live Showcase Program

Proximity
Australian Dance Theatre

Venue: Her Majesty's Theatre, 58 Grote St
When:
- Fri 24 Feb 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
- Sat 25 Feb 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
- Wed 29 Feb 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
- Thu 1 Mar 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
- Fri 2 Mar 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
- Sat 3 Mar 08:00 PM - 09:10 PM
Genre: Dance
Main Audience: Adults (18+)
No. in touring party: 19

Proximity

Australia's most internationally-renowned dance company, Australian Dance Theatre, presents a new world premiere.

Liberating the body from our everyday understanding of physics Proximity is an immersive visual experience. Choreographer Garry Stewart works with Paris-based video engineer/techno whiz kid Thomas Pachoud to create an astonishing dialogue for dance and real-time video manipulation. Eight phenomenal dancers train video cameras on each other to capture live, their ingenious and demanding physicality.

Centering on ideas from neuroscience and the nature of the selfhood, Proximity is a breathtaking panorama that renders visible the intangible connections that bind our bodies to world we inhabit.

Proximity interplays notions of time, memory, presence/absence, scale and metamorphosis. This hybrid of live performance and electronic media erupts in the imagination of the audience and interrupts the conventions of linear time and visual perception. The miniscule becomes massive. The singular becomes multiple. A fleeting moment becomes suspended, elongated, repetitive. Foremost, through video technology, the body is metamorphosed and freed from the limitations of its established relationships to physics and biology.

Creative Team:
Thomas Pachoud – Video Artist and Engineer (France)
Huey Benjamin – Composer (Australia)
Mark Pennington – Lighting Design (Australia)

Australian Dance Theatre
Artistic Director: Garry Stewart

Following a career as a dancer and work as an independent choreographer based in Sydney, Australia, Garry Stewart was appointed as the Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre in late 1999.

The hallmark of Garry Stewart’s choreography has been to explore the body through extremes of velocity and power, as well as collaborating with artists working in other media such as robotics, photography and architecture. His repertoire of mainstage works for ADT has been the foundation upon which the company has been able to rapidly grow its significant international reputation. Birdbrain, The Age of Unbeauty, Nothing, HELD, Devolution, G and Be Your Self are tremendously varied in their respective conceptual underpinnings and dance vocabulary. In 2006 he collaborated with theatre director Nigel Jamieson to make the multi-award-winning Honour Bound.

In 2010 Garry created a large-scale video installation work titled Collision Course with CM Films and in 2011, new work Worldhood featuring live drawing by award-winning South Australian artist Thom Buchanan.

Garry’s growing influence on the international scene has led to invitations to create new work for international companies such as Rambert Dance Company, Ballet de l’Opera National du Rhin, the Royal Ballet of Flanders and the West Australian Ballet.

Recently Garry has been named amongst the world's fifty most influential contemporary choreographers, by British academic publisher Routledge.

Photography by Chris Herzfeld Camlight Productions