News

I Like This

created by Antony Hamilton and Byron Perry

World Premiere
20-29 November 2008
Chunky Move Studios
111 Sturt St, Southbank VIC 3006

Bookings
M-Tix, The C.U.B Malthouse
113 Sturt St , Southbank VIC 3006
T: 03 9685 5111
F: 03 9685 5112
W: www.m-tix.com.au

A room of objects wait patiently in stasis for a purpose, a beginning. Byron Perry and Antony Hamilton's new work I Like This is a journey of two men who embark on an unusual creative project; to design an environment, attempt to make sense of it, and begin to control it. As these two director/choreographers appear on stage creating the work at the same time as it is being performed we watch a show and simultaneously, the making of it. Intimately engaging, I Like This balances between detailed sophistication and delightful mischief.  It's often comic absurdity, reveals our limited capacity to be able to geniuinely communicate to one another and also control or even fully understand our surroundings.

I Like This is the first show for The Next Move, a series of performances created by the next generation of Australian dance makers and presented by Chunky Move. The Next Move is designed to bridge the divide between young choreographers making small independent work and more established choreographers running their own organisations or engaged with larger commissions Drawing on its experience nurturing and producing a range of exciting new work, Chunky Move is in a unique and important position to take the next step forward and produce a series of new commissions.

Creative Team
Direction and Choreography: Antony Hamilton and Byron Perry
Costume Design: Paula Levis

Executive Producer Rachael Azzopardi

Production Manager Chris Mercer

Production Administrator/ Stage Manager Leonie Dixon

Performers: Antony Hamilton, Stephanie Lake, Alisdair Macindoe, Byron Perry and Lee Serle

Preview
Thu 20 Nov at 7.30pm
Season
Fri 21 Nov, 7.30pm
Sat 22 Nov, 2pm and 7.30pm
Sun 23 Nov, 4pm
Tues 25 Nov, 7.30pm
Wed 26 Nov, 7.30pm
Thu 27 Nov, 7.30pm
Fri 28 Nov, 7.30pm
Sat 29 Nov, 2pm and 7.30pm

50 mins no interval

Prices

Full $25
Concession $18
Students $15

Directors Notes

Right from our first conversations we decided to record everything, these first sessions together were as you might expect, filled with ridiculously unachievable ideas of how the work might play out. Our excitement and interest peaked as long as we kept our dialogue firmly seated in the ridiculous. The minute we swettled on an idea we began to  loswe interest in it. We very quickly became excited by the challenge of extrapolating this unbridled creative fascination and find ways in which these fantastically muscular and rhythmic conversations could somehow be transformed into the meat and body of the work. In order to somehow capture the sheer delight and mutability of thought our goal was to theatricalise these spontaneous articulations so we became very excited by the idea of creating a work that is essentially about itself, a work that didn't need a theme or a story as a catalyst for its creation but rather one that sprang from a sort of creative cannibalism. We began to like the idea of creating a work that would feed from itself in order to grow and these first recordings seemed like an appropriate food to start feeding it.

In terms of our working relationship we decided early on that the sense of relentless collaboration would be paramount to the success of the work as this was the essence of our original conversations. So we decided that we would work on everything together at the same time and that no matter the genesis or origin of the idea, once it was out it was open game. We have tried as much as possible to limit ourselves in terms of the theatrical topography of the work. It felt right considering the ego-centric nature of the concept that all of the theatrical elements i.e sound, lighting etc should be operated from on stage and by ourselves or the performers. This has left its own distinctive mark on the work and has in many ways dictated the mode of presentation purely through the limitations that it imposes.

Essentially the work is us; present, now and in the moment. Our conversations, interactions and general silliness, our heads emptied, unrestricted and untamed. We've taken whatever our minds threw up in the air and caught what pieces we could on the way down.

How to get to Chunky Move Studios

Antony Hamilton was the inaugural recipient of the Russell Page Fellowship in 2004, and winner of the Greenroom Award for Best Male Dancer in 2005. He has been commissioned to choreograph works for Dancenorth, Stompin and Rogue and his work for Rogue, The Counting was nominated in 2008 for The Betty Pounder Award For Original Choreography as part of The Greenroom Awards.

Byron Perry is a multiple nominee for both the Green Room and Australian Dance Awards and in 2006 he received an Australian Dance Award for 'Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer' and won ‘Best Male Dancer’ at the Greenroom Awards for his year’s work.

After six years performing together with companies including Chunky Move, Kage, Lucy Guerin and BalletLab, Byron and Antony have created this new work, the first to premiere under Chunky Move’s Next Move program.

“He's a little smaller than me, but other than that we're practically the same person. We share a sense of humour and unfortunately it's his turn with it today. I grew up telling people my dancing was merely a form of balance training for my future career as a pro surfer and he grew up pretending that his home town of Balmain was in East LA and that dance was his ticket out of the ghetto.” Byron Perry, 2008

“I tend to think Byron is a bit more contemplative than me, and I err on the side of spontaneity. I 'do'. It's what Yoda recommends. I think Byron sometimes does the same, but he will analyse it and get into a fix about it later. He's also more sensitive, and I'm more insensitive. I can be hard on people. I don't think Byron has that nature in him at all. He's got a very good nature.” Antony Hamilton, 2008

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