Indonesia's tour-de-force music duo Senyawa and Melbourne's choreographic luminaries Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek join forces with two of Australia’s leading dance companies, Lucy Guerin Inc and Dancenorth. Together they take you on a unique music/dance ritual.
Senyawa reinterprets the Javanese tradition of entering trance through dance and music as a powerful, secular, present-day ritual. Their unusual sound borrows from the metal bands they listened to as teenagers – Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden – and Indonesian ritual and folk idioms. As the performance unfolds, Senyawa’s unique fusion of hand-made electrified stringed instruments with operatic melodies and heavy metal vocals slowly builds to a euphoric pitch while the dancers are propelled into wild physical abandonment and ecstatic release, creating a visceral, empathic experience for the audience. Selected members of the audience will be called onto the stage to joining the dancers, dissolving the demarcation between dancer and non-dancer, audience and performer, professional and the amateur in a cross-cultural, shared ritual.
Helpmann Award Winner – Best Choreography 2017
Helpmann Award Winner – Best Dance Production 2017
Direction & Choreography Gideon Obarzanek and Lucy Guerin
Music Senwaya Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi
Dancers Kyle Page, Jenni Lars , Ashley McLellan, Georgia Rudd, Mason Kelly, S amantha Hines, Jack Ziesing, Josh Mu and Felix Sampson
Produced by Dancenorth
Dancenorth Artistic Director Kyle Page
Dancenorth General Manager Deanna Smart
Lighting Designer Ben Bosco Shaw
Audio System Designer Nick Roux
Audio Engineer Andres Salcedo Sanchez
Rehearsal Director Amber Haines
Costume Designer Harriet Oxley
Production Managers Murray Dempsey and Melanie Stanton
Company Manager Kellie Williams
Attractor was commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne for Asia TOPA through the KMATS Endowment Fund, the Playking Foundation and the Australia-ASEAN Council of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Department of Communication and the Arts’ Catalyst—Australian Arts and Culture Fund and the Australia Council for the Arts.
IMAGE l Gregory Lorenzutt