Overview
Under stark lighting and to the beat of a throbbing soundtrack, a dancer and a bodybuilder come together in an unlikely pas de deux that tests the boundaries of physical endurance. This is MAXIMUM, the aptly named piece by Australian choreographer and dancer Natalie Abbott, recently returned from the Festival d’Avignon in France to showcase her performance in Sydney as part of Score season by Performance Space.
The unique dance work developed when Abbott began collaborating with bodybuilder Donny Henderson-Smith. "I originally wanted to be lifted off the ground for a 45-minute show and thought it would be a strong contrast to work with a bodybuilder," explains Abbott. "When I began to work with Donny, though, I realised how much more information and personality he could bring to the work. We still include a pretty long and devastating lift; however, the piece is really more about us working together to find unity and a common language for performance.
Given such an unexpected collaboration, the differences between dancing and bodybuilding are hard to ignore. Initially, MAXIMUM appears to be a performance of contrasts: light and heavy, small and large, grace and grunt. Despite this, the two performers find a unique harmony through mental focus and physical strength. The challenging choreography tests dancer and bodybuilder equally, and the whole idea of what happens to the human body at physical extremes is what fascinates Abbott.
"My training as a dancer was quite intense and I really had to push my body to get through that," she says. "I know that the training is probably even more intense for a bodybuilder and this is why I was interested in exploring the relationship between both practices. Both forms are so intense and focused, yet yield such dissimilar results. I was super interested in exploring the dynamics of placing both bodies next to each other. The connotations of a massive male next to a smaller female, the traditional context of a man partnering a woman and what these images automatically imply for a viewer. My vision was then to override these assumptions and reveal us as humans, rather than performers, a bodybuilder and a dancer."
You’d expect the performers to have endured intense physical training to prepare for such a gruelling performance. Not so, says Abbott, who points out “we need to be challenged during the [show]”, and so while the two prepared by tuning their bodies into sync, they avoided additional fitness training. That means the exhaustion we see on stage is real; the charade of a performance is stripped away to reveal the humans behind the choreography, lending the show its raw physicality that has both challenged and captivated audiences. ("Beautifully achieved, exhilarating work," wrote ABC Arts after the premiere at Next Wave.)
Maximum plays as part of Performance Space's Score season of works driven by dance, movement, music and noise. Abbott is particularly “curious and excited” to see One Thing Follows Another... by Gail Priest and Jane McKernan, a performance inspired by the 1960s avant-garde that plays on ideas of independence and collaboration between music and dance. Other highlights include the genre-defying fusion piece Keep Everything by critically acclaimed dance company Chunky Move, as well as Psychic Synth, a digital work by Pia Van Gelder that will read your mind.
Score is on from August 1 to September 7 at Carriageworks. See MAXIMUM from August 27-30. Single tickets are $25 adult/$15 concession, or you go all out and buy a season pass for $130. See the website for details.