THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Chunky Move bowls them over with An Act of Now Text: Marcus Pugh Photographer: Jeff Busby
More information: Niklas Pajanti: www.niklaspajanti.com Chunky Move: (03) 9645 5188 or www.chunkymove.com Resolution X: (03) 9701 2411 or www.resolutionx.com.au Dome Garden Supplies: (03) 9282 1988 or www.domegarden.com.au
Above: On arrival at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl the audience are confronted with a glowing, smoke-filled glasshouse at centrestage. Opposite: Trapped in the glasshouse, the dancers use every available toe-hold for their performance.
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small building with transparent walls and a roof lit with low-pressure sodium-lamps would usually be associated with activity of the horticultural variety. But put that building on stage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, fill it with dancers, give one of Australia’s best lighting designers free rein and you have a unique – and stunning – artistic vision. An Act of Now was Anouk van Dijk’s first show as artistic director of Australian contemporary dance institution Chunky Move. The show won The Age’s Critics’ Choice award for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, sold out its season and met with almost unanimous critical approval. While the piece delivered the excellent artistic themes and execution audiences have come to expect from Chunky Move, what made it so evocative was the non-traditional approach to the technical elements. As a punter, I found it exciting to watch - and as a hire manager for production partner Resolution X, it was my privilege to provide the show’s lighting equipment. Audience members put on wireless headphones as they were ushered to the top of the hill overlooking the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Here we drank in a vista that encompassed the open face of the venue, framed by the Melbourne city skyline. On the darkened stage, the smoke-filled glass house suddenly burst into life with strobe light, synced to flash in time with a heartbeat audio track. A solitary silhouetted figure, at first glance part of the inanimate structure, stood guard over the audience as it made its way into the seat banks. From this perspective the glass house – now clear of haze – was dwarfed against the cavernous expanse of brightly lit amphitheatre. The show began, dancers materialising via a trapdoor in the floor of the house and exiting with just as much mystery. Later, as cast members swung and hung from the structure’s roof beams, the transparent box took on the role of a living and 26
breathing character; with interior lighting it became an intimate, welcoming space that drew the audience in; lit from the outside, it was an isolated specimen case. CLEAR CANVAS
The Bowl and the glass house provided Niklas (Nik) Pajanti with a canvas on which to paint his inspired lighting design. His palette included lowpressure sodium lamps, 1500W QI lamps, metal halide lamps, molefay eight-way blinders, cool white LEDs embedded in the perimeter of the floor, and Martin Atomic strobes. And that was just for the interior of the house. As the rest of the walls and ceiling became performance surfaces, Pajanti used the structure’s central beam to rig his lights. Outside the house, Pajanti placed traditional theatrical pars (ETC Source Four MFL PARs), while colour-changing 2.5kW HMIs (Studio Due City Colour 2500s) backlit the performance space and the amphitheatre backdrop, with the assistance of weatherproof cast-iron PAR64s. Clay Paky Alpha 1500 Profiles provided much of the ‘punch’ lighting into the glass house. Pajanti opted for a short throw here and used the framing shutter system to keep his shot tight, but then employed the fixture’s extensive focal range to light dancers 30 metres away when at one point they ‘escaped’ the glass house. An Act of Now was the continuation of a vision that Anouk van Dijk staged previously in different forms with her own dance company in the Netherlands. Once appointed artistic director of Chunky Move, van Dijk was keen to make her mark and begin her tenure with a work that was both audacious and technically experimental. Pajanti, already established as one of Australia’s best lighting designers in contemporary dance, was an excellent fit for her interpretation. Having designed for dance and theatre since 1998, the bulk of his work has been with Chunky Move under previous artistic director Gideon Obarzanek.