Antony Hamilton's black series defies context

https://web.archive.org/web/20130812163633/http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3751067.htm

Originally posted: Friday, 3 May 2013 at 11:32am

The pursuit of the impossible is the idea behind Melbourne-based dancer and choreographer Antony Hamilton's ground-breaking dance series, the black series.

The black series is an attempt to "escape context" and to create a series of dance pieces that are non-representational, says Hamilton.

Each of the works in the black series are performed on a black stage, with dancers dressed in dark costumes (sometimes textured and alien-like in appearance), their faces are often concealed, or splashed with black make-up. It may be dark, but the audience's experience is heightened by exquisitely simple visuals and highly textured soundscapes.

The black series was conceived by Hamilton during a residency in 2009 at radialsystem V, a contemporary dance incubator in Berlin. Hamilton's residency was in part supported by a grant from the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, established in memory of Liedtke a visionary dancer and choreographer.

Prior to Berlin, Hamilton had established a small profile in Australia through impressive works like blazeblue oneline. The radialsystem V residency gave him an opportunity to shrug off the expectations of his peers and test out works on a new audience.

"People came to expect certain things from me and my work, so it was nice to test ideas and see if with an audience who'd never seen anything [my previous work], they still held something," says Hamilton.

Unintentionally, the three pieces have been performed out of order; black project 1 was first performed in 2009; black project 3 in 2010 and finally black project 2 was realised this year as part of Melbourne's Dance Massive program.

"Black project 3 was about seizing an opportunity. I developed the work because I was offered a commission with the Lyon Opera Ballet in France and it just so happened they were able to provide a cast of 22 dancers," he adds.

Although each piece in the series is distinct, there are consistent threads that link them together. Across the series, the dancer's movements are often mechanical and repetitive; their forms link together, either as figures in a landscape moving simultaneously or as parts of a machine performing a function.

For Hamilton the actions of his dancers provide a way to dissolve the body's relationship to the space around it.

"The black series is about neutralising the value between the walls and the objects within it," says Hamilton, "it ceases to be, hopefully, like anything you've ever seen."

Related links:
Antony Hamilton projects
Insite Arts
Tanja-Liedtke Foundation
radialsystem V
Lyon Opera Ballet
Dance Massive
Megafun

Credits:
black project 1
Performers: Antony Hamilton, Melanie Lane
Video Projection: Olaf Meyers
Music: Robert Henke, Mika Vainio and Vainio and Fennesz
Set/Costume Design: Antony Hamilton

black project 2:
Performers: James Batchelor, Jake Kuzma, Talitha Maslin, Jessie Oshodi, Marnie Palomares, Jess Wong
Costume Designer: Paula Levis
Sound Designer: Alisdair Macindoe
Video Designer: Kit Webster

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