The Herald Sun - 22 June 2005
Tense Dave may be ADF masterwork
THE HERALD SUN
Wednesday June 22, 2005, Durham, North Carolina
By Susan Broili
“Australia’s Chunky Move packs a dizzying array of emotionally loaded action on a revolving stage in performances of ‘Tense Dave’ at the American Dance Festival.
This unusual work by the company’s artistic director Gideon Obarzanek, choreographer Lucy Guerin and theater director Michael Kantor has the markings of a masterwork.
It forms a cohesive whole. It draws a viewer in with such focused attention that time seems to stand still. And it provokes a myriad of thoughts and feelings.
This rich, imaginative and mostly dark work sends the mind - as wells as the body- into a spin after it goes ‘round and ‘round for an hour on the Reynolds Theater stage. Having to constantly shift the eyes from right to left to follow the action proved a bit disorientating afterward.
The unusual mode of presentation perfectly fits the content because it connotes a feeling that time, the circumstances of life, keep right on coming whether a person is ready. When things get hectic and overwhelming in the dance, it’s as though we can hear Dave thinking “ Stop the world, I want to get off”
Even the mechanical sounds of the motor and the lumbering turns of the “wheel” evoke a foreboding, relentless approach of the unknown, like a monster’s footsteps in a horror movie.
The stage completely stops turning only once, and when it does there’s a sense of relief as though Dave and all of us have found that stillness, that peace we seek.
This surreal work comes across as a dream as interpreted by Carl Jung, in which al characters are actually manifestations of different aspects of emotions, desires, of the dreamer.
A Key to this interpretation comes very late in the work as Dave, stretched out on his side, appears to wake up, and realize he’s had a very strange dream.
An isolated, lonely looking Dave (Brian Lucas) appears at first, in a wedge shaped room/ But soon, other characters appear in other rooms: Kristy Ayre, who acts like a Victorian heroine in a Jane Austin novel; Brian Carbee as an arrogant actor so self-absorbed he photographs his feet; Michelle Heaven as a suicidal , nightgown wearing woman; Luke Smiles as an angry young man with a penchant for unprovoked violence.
As the world turns, Dave’s life becomes increasingly intertwined with these characters as the walls between them literally come down due to fluid set changes. Sometimes, his very existence seems threatened by these characters’ self destructive and violent proclivities.
Ina hard that’s hard to watch and suggests a cross between industrial accidents and a gratuitously violent martial arts film, dancers hack, punch, skewer each other and even appear to use a chainsaw to cut one of them down the middle.
Gross sound effects conjure up images of autopsies on one of those crime scene investigation TV shows and add to the horror. Perhaps it’s included to suggest everyone’s potential for violence, a tendency that seems to be fed and exploited these days by the movie and TV industries. This selection drew laughs from the audience members but no this one.
In one moving scene that illustrates the need for people to connect with one another, Dave and the nightgown woman, on opposite sides of a wall trace with a hand the movement of the other’s hand on the wall.
In one of the funniest, inventive sections which illustrates the sense of play as a part of creativity, including the creation of a dance, the man in the suit directs the nightgown woman to use just one finger to express many actions.
With her finger, she kills some ants, gives her fingers a rest( she makes a cradle with one hand) and acts out an entire story-line of finding a friend, going to prison, escaping and assuming a new identity( here she holds up a thumb).
The entire cast deserves an applause for their character interpretation and their ability to perform on a moving stage. Sometimes, they go counter-clockwise along the edge.
At one point, it’s a wonder Ayre kept her footing as she turns her body quickly one way, and then the other. Except for Lucas who remains on stage, dancer also make deft entrances and exits, upstage, out of sight of the audience, which adds a magical touch.
The dances ends with some sense of hope as Dave walks as though on a treadmill, his head held high as he resolutely carries on.”