"We have an unspoken language and shared taste in music and art and film."
Since the notion of collaboration sits at the heart of I Can Hear Dancing, it’s appropriate to ask how it is that siblings go about co-authoring, given their obviously shared history. Musician Julian takes up the cudgels first. “Antony and I both work with a lot of other people outside of working together and whilst there’s certainly a brother relationship there and we have an unspoken language and shared taste in music and art and film, I don’t know how much of it is two brothers working or whether it’s just two artists working. Maybe a little bit of both.”
For choreographer Antony the challenge of working with his musician brother is one of familiarity. “The fact that we have shared taste doesn’t necessarily make it easier. It kinda makes us a bit too comfortable maybe, whereas we both really like to push beyond what we know.”
Having made his fortune with The Presets, Julian clearly finds the more austere world of dance both liberating and challenging. “It’s tricky in that generally when I’ve been asked to make music for dance I’ve been asked to make it simpler. Y’know, do less — less sound, less melody, less development. Whereas when we’re making pop songs or techno things the music has to be interesting by itself.”
The art here is for the brothers Hamilton to bring their separate muses together for a combined purpose. “It was me at a piano and Antony standing next to me trying to work out music and movement together; which was certainly very different for me,” Julian recalls.
Indeed, as it’s evolved over its lengthy two-and-a-half-year gestation period, Ruth has encouraged the brothers to nudge at the limits of form. As Antony says, “One of the challenges I was facing was the whole linear aspect of things; y’know, that whole beginning, middle, end thing, and the expectation of a dance work taking roughly an hour. As maker you’re slightly forced into that framework, but what if you wanna make something that doesn’t last an hour? What if you want to make five- to ten-minute self-contained pieces?”
