Australian Dance Theatre: Multiverse

Australian Dance Theatre: Multiverse –
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, 10 July -

Garry Stewart’s new work, Multiverse, is a product of his two-year stint as Thinker-in-Residence at Deakin University’s Motion.Lab, a centre that investigates synergies between dance and new media such as motion capture technology and 3D graphics. The title comes from string theory, a strand of theoretical physics that, among other things, posits the possibility of there being multiple, perhaps even infinite, numbers of universes. As this would suggest, Multiverse is a work that builds on Stewart’s long-standing interest in how science and new media can be integrated with choreography to push dance in new directions.

In what is possibly a world-first, on entering the theatre we are handed heavy-duty 3D glasses, which must be worn throughout the show in order to appreciate the 3D graphics produced by Kim Vincs and her team of animators at Motion.Lab. These are truly astounding—almost overwhelmingly so, at times. Morphing from sparkly red efflorescence, to pastel-coloured beads extending infinitely into space, planetary bodies spinning in orbit, blazing red cuboid planes, canyons of swirling coral and cathedrals of moon rock, the graphics are absolutely compelling. Indeed, at one point I had to clench my eyes shut to prevent the imminent landing of a huge origami-like space ship on my retina, or so it felt.

The most interesting part of Multiverse though, is how the three dancers interact with these illusions. At times the graphics hover above them, as in the opening sequence in which Kimball Wong rolls into the space under a whitish ring that gradually transforms into a green angular structure that bathes his body in a wash of colour. One of the most successful sections is one in which Wong and Matt Roffe seem to manipulate a force field of sparkly red efflorescence, giving the illusion of furling and unfurling it like a magical sheet of light. The longish section towards the end of the piece in which Samantha Hines appears to be embedded in a succession of rapidly changing worlds, her angular, jerky upper body movements echoing the frantic pace of the illusions swirling over and around her, is another standout.

All three dancers were terrific, but Hines was a revelation in this work, managing instantaneous shifts in movement quality from unctuous to athetoid with ease.

Catherine Ziersch’s costumes—flesh-coloured short pants and tops with decorative pleating—are stylish but unobtrusive, and Brendan Woithe’s music works seamlessly with the graphics to create an impression of a pounding, ever changing cosmos.

There are moments though, when the dancers and the graphics are drawing the eye in different directions, with the graphics tending to win out. The seating configuration for this season did not help; a steep rake meant that people such as myself sitting in the upper rows were craning downwards to see the dancers when they were doing floor work, whilst simultaneously trying to keep track of the graphics being projected high into the space. A larger, proscenium arch theatre might be a better setting, allowing graphics and dancers to be more closely aligned in the visual field.

Multiverse feels like the beginning an exciting new trajectory for the company, and will hopefully be developed further. In the program notes, Stewart outlines the ideas from physics that inspired the work, but it is not necessary to have a grasp of theoretical physics to enjoy Multiverse’s astonishing visual poetry.

- Maggie Tonkin