An Act Of Now

When newly installed artistic director Anouk van Dijk said that she was interested in site-specific work, many of us probably wondered exactly what she meant. With the daringly eccentric and beautifully executed An Act Of Now we have our answer.

Even before the first smoke was pumped into the specially constructed glasshouse, the usual black box routine was disrupted as the audience were shepherded up a hill, handed headphones and told to wait in a line as bright lights seared their eyeballs and a chorus of urgent voices grew louder in their cans.

By the time the patrons were shown to their seats, the dancers had gradually begun to emerge from the veil of smoke van Dijk had shrouded them in. As Marcel Wierckx's ominously pulsing score began its own slow build, Chunky Move's new era came into sharper focus. And, wow – how beautiful it is.

With its very European, architectural choreographic palette and virile contemporary physicality, An Act Of Now is edgy, unsettling and hypnotic – even psychotic. The confined (caged) dancers compete and co-operate by turns in their austere geometric world, as their footfalls, exhalations, shrieks and disturbing laughter add human colours to the crisp, compressed soundtrack. However, amidst all the vaguely apocalyptic, post-industrial abstraction, Anouk van Dijk injects a gloriously messy animalism.

Very now, very Chunky, very bloody good.

Running at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl until Saturday 27 October