Year of Premiere: 2001
Credits
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100% Off
The Dark Room
Massive Reduction
The Dress Shop
Our Golden Cages
Special Guests
- Johnny Young Talent Team
- DJs: DJ Delay, Boogs, Angela Maison, Action Direkt,
One LC, John Ideni
- Singer: Norm Bell
Creative Personnel
Production Crew
- Production and Operations Manager: Donna
Aston
- Stage Manager: Briony Leivers
- Sound Technician: Hugh Covill
- Lighting Technician: David Murray
Concept
Arcade was presented in Melbourne in May
2001. Thematically, the title of Arcade reflected both the
subject matter for the work – a reflection on the consumption
of the body in a shop-a-holic world – and the venue
for the work – a series of empty shops and spaces in
a retail complex in Melbourne’s CBD.
For Arcade, Chunky Move commissioned five directors/choreographers
to create their own performances/installations for five different
shops and spaces in the arcade. The artists commissioned were
extremely diverse, both in terms of their primary area of
artistic expertise and in their professional experience –
David Pledger (Artistic Director of Not Yet It’s Difficult
Theatre Company), Gideon Obarzanek (Artistic Director of Chunky
Move), Moira Finnucane (Performance/Cabaret Artist), and Lucy
Guerin (Choreographer). Chunky Move was particularly keen
to ensure that at least one of the ‘shops’ being
developed was created by a younger artist, hence the inclusion
of Stephanie Lake, (winner of the Best Emerging Dancer, 2000
Green Room Awards).
Each director/choreographer was given free-reign to conceptually
develop his or her own shop and was offered the capacity to
work with a variety of dancers and performers. The works created
were The Dark Room, The Dress Shop, 100% Off, Massive Reduction
and Our Golden Cages. A sixth room featured an all-Australian
icon in the performing arts – The Johnny Young Talent
Team.
Arcade audience members were encouraged to wander and browse
through the different shops at their own leisure, an unusual
act for a dance performance, which are generally experienced
in a traditional theatre setting. Audience members could also
refresh themselves with martinis, vodkas and beers from a
kabana lounge bar set up by hip Melbourne bar The Gin Palace,
where live DJs added to the festive atmosphere.
Director’s
Notes
100% Off – Notes by Gideon Obarzanek
In thinking about the performer commodified, I thought of the celebrity
as a product, somewhat dehumanised and fictional. Someone who is public
property, someone we think we know because we are given information about
him or her and they are there for us, but we really don’t know them
at all.
I wanted to create a storeroom of packaged real and fake celebrities,
where audiences could wander through alone and reach inside these boxes
through hand-holes and feel these boxed up people. I had a different group
of eight volunteers every night in the boxes (100 in all) and their portrait
photo and brief biography would be displayed outside the room for people
to read and view before they entered. Once inside the room, the boxes
were not marked and the audience could only guess by touch who was who
amongst the eight volunteers.
The Dark Room – Notes by Dave Pledger
The Dark Room was inspired by the idea of a photographer who used herself
as the subject of her work in the spirit of, say, Cindy Sherman. To this
I added the motivation of a person who suffered from a light-sensitive
condition which provoked uncontrollable physical responses to colour and
intensity – a kind of aesthetic tourette’s.
Massive Reduction – Notes by Lucy Guerin
My shop was inhabited by two dysfunctionally entwined shopkeepers who
sold a product, the incredible “Shrinkolator” that was long
out of date. Their shop had become more of a shrine to their own idiosyncrasies,
rather than a viable commercial venture. Into this scenario walked the
unsuspecting consumer…
The Dress Shop - Notes by Moira Finucane and
Jackie Smith
In this work we explored images of voodoo, the creation of monsters, tableaux
and images and silhouette from silent film, and the expression of intensely
feminised desire, anger and passion through the intensely controlled and
minute action of sewing.
My original vision was a dress shop – Victorian, dark and Gothic.
The work was about the creation of a dress and the creature within it.
The work counterpoints two restrained, contained, seated seamstresses
– with black dresses up to their necks although eyes and hands alone
are visible – with a creature, the creature they 'sew'. The dance
of the seamstresses – restricted and controlled to their eyes, their
mouths, their fingers and their sewing – created the dress and the
creature in it. Moira Finucane was the creature of the dress and through
the intention of the seamstresses, I envisioned the creature and the dress
growing and taking form on a long inclined traverse that covers three
sides of the room and ascends continuously. The work took place around
the audience using the three frames of the enormous glass windows that
capture the ornate antique imagery of the shop front, St Paul's Cathedral
lit up at night and the adjacent buildings.
Media Response
“In a world where anything goes, where taboo has been distilled
to little more than the name of pungent, misspelt perfume, Obarzanek has
hit a raw nerve,” THE AGE.
“The recipe is simple; dance and performance art by six of Melbourne’s
hippest young choreographers and theatre directors, served up in a relaxed
bar-room ambience with plenty of booze and schmooze. And it works,”
THE AUSTRALIAN
“Well Gideon Obarzanek is at it again, ruffling feathers, taking
a dig at the arts establishment, and de-privileging contemporary dance
as an elitist art form. Why shouldn’t it be entertaining, fun, even
accessible?“ THE AGE.
“Obarzanek is masterminding the supreme retail experience –
a virtual mall with muzak, dazzling colours and a dash of physical reality.”
HERALD SUN.
“Arcade is a grand sale of fun – a memorable night of retail
therapy sure to drag audiences out of their arm chairs.” SUNDAY
HERALD SUN
“Chunky Move can often get the post-modern ‘jolt the audience’
thing drearily wrong, but this time they have pulled off something extraordinary.
Take a walk. Have a feel. Buy now,” INPRESS MAGAZINE.
“Excitingly weird… fascinating and transgressive… Chunky
Move has nailed it, and they’re not afraid to let us know,”
BEAT MAGAZINE.
“There should be some rules determining how a subsidised dance company
treats a paying audience. It should start shows more or less on time and
provide seats and a clear view for everyone. It should not promise something
it can’t deliver… it should not expect the audience to queue
seven times… Putting on a show worth watching, starting on time
and providing seats is a revolutionary alternative the company might consider,”
THE SUNDAY AGE.
Performance History
Click here for details of Arcade’s
performance history.
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