FAKER created and performed by GIDEON OBARZANEK Gideon Obarzanek Gideon Obarzanek graduated from the Australian Ballet School in 1987 to perform with the Queensland Ballet and the Sydney Dance Company before becoming a freelance dancer and choreographer both in Australia and abroad. He founded Chunky Move in 1995 and has been its Artistic Director to date. While the company mostly features his work, it also commissions other choreographers and is highly involved in fostering the development of dance and choreography through a series of initiatives in its home city of Melbourne, Australia. Gideon’s works have been diverse in form and content including stage productions, installations, site-specific works and film. His works have been performed in many festivals and theatres around the world in the U.K, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Photo: Heidrun Löhr
Gideon’s film, Dance Like Your Old Man, co-directed with Edwina Throsby won best short documentary at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival, 2008 Flickerfest International Short Film Festival and Best Film at the Cinedans Festival in Amsterdam. In collaboration with Lucy Guerin and Michael Kantor, Gideon has also received a New York Bessie award for outstanding choreography and creation for Chunky Move’s production of Tense Dave. In 2008 he received two Australian Helpmann Awards for GLOW and Mortal Engine.
A note from Gideon Obarzanek I think it was vanity that originally drew me to dance. I embraced its rigorous practice, driven by self-interest in my appearance and virtuosic ability. Being desirable and impressive to others was important and exciting for me. Today vanity has not completely deserted me, but this kind of relationship to dance is no more. It did not end just because of my declining agility and physical power, or even when my body slackened, the skin loosening off my slowly deflating muscles. Initially my relationship to dance was also one of sensation, I felt it, and I wanted to show it off to others. I don’t remember when, but at some point long ago that feeling left me. For physical exhilaration I surf, for an interesting story I read and for easy tears and laughter I watch movies and TV. Watching dance however, is less straightforward. I am interested in performances that reveal something that shifts or challenges my perception and understanding of the world within and around me. But this does not happen often and the works I make as a choreographer do not come easily. In fact for the greater part of my adult life my relationship to dance has been questioning its legitimacy as an art form. One of my strongest motivations in making new work is a search for proof that dance performance is indeed a compelling medium of expression. Despite dancing and choreographing with various companies within Australia and abroad and creating many critically successful and popular works for my own company, Chunky Move, I have always considered myself as something of an imposter. Oddly, I most often feel on the periphery of dance, even though I have always been at its very centre. Regardless of my wide interest and insatiable curiosity for many other things, I have done little else for over twenty-five years. In most respects choosing to perform this work is not unique from a history of middle-aged choreographers who have drifted from the stage to running a company and felt the need to re-connect to what drew them to dance in the first place. I am repelled however by this notion of finding one’s way again by baring oneself to the public through a revealing and challenging performance. So what am I doing here? I do not feel any great need to perform again, nor do I get an important or exciting sense of accomplishment from doing it. I think I am here because I have an interesting story to perform and it only makes sense if I do it, no one else. Thank you.