At Supersense 'Everything Will Be Moving And Breathing'

If it's full-body immersion you're after, try blending the physicality of contemporary dance with the altered state soundscapes of HTRK. Having done that, plug the resulting collaboration into the context of a weekend of 'ecstatic potential' and you have a truly supersensory happening. Or rather, the potential for one. 

"This is more like a lounge experience I would imagine."

When The Music speaks to Anouk van Dijk about Chunky Move's upcoming new work with Australian indie darlings HTRK, the piece in question, commissioned for the upcoming Supersense Festival, is both unnamed and largely unrehearsed. None of which appears to faze van Dijk. Indeed, Chunky's Artistic Director is quite relaxed about it, clearly looking forward to the challenge of working in a different way. The piece, she insists, will be more like a gig than a painstakingly constructed work of dance. "Partly improvised, partially with set components, we're really surrendering to the way that music unfolds in terms of intensity. Y'know, it's a very different collaboration to something like Complexity Of Belonging, which was very a rigorous process, like theatre. This is more like a lounge experience, I would imagine."

That this ties in neatly with Supersense's experimental, experiential vibe is perhaps not entirely accidental. After all, it was the festival's director Sophia Brous who brought Chunky Move and HTRK together in the first place. Responding to the invitation, van Dijk says, "We want to keep it really intense and really grow out of the excitement of working together for that first time."

On that score, HTRK certainly came to the party. Since beginning life as a trio back in 2003, HTRK have carved out a niche as purveyors of evocative electro-industrial sounds. "My interest in working with them is that they work so experientially," van Dijk explains. "It's so about letting go of certain parameters and getting almost into another state. On one hand the music is really big and vast and on the other it's really intimate and personal. So, since I'm a proximity freak in all my work and I love working with the sense of distance between the audience and the stage, this was really a very tempting collaboration."

It may well be the audience that has its buttons pushed when Chunky Move's three dancers and HTRK's (now) duo take to stage. As Anouk van Dijk describes it, "Our 'gig' will be on the main stage of the State Theatre and the audience will be on the stage too." There they'll be treated to an amalgam of dance, live music and live video, as the performance happens among and around them. "It will be contained," van Dijk adds, "but at the same time, everything will be moving, will be colour and texture and touch and breathing."

The lack of a fourth wall in this instance not only gels with the overall Supersense ethos but smashes both dance company and rock band comfort zones. "In the music world there's a very different way of immersing yourself in an experience. It's a time-changing event. At least, that's my experience."