X c e s s i v e d a n s e f o r u n d e r p r e s s u r e h u m a n i t y
Choreographer Garry Stewart, the director of the Australian Dance Theatre since 1999, presents us with his new piece "Devolution" created for the 2006 Adelaide Festival. The dancers are confronted with gigantic robots, in an attempt to invent a new way of living side by side in an unknown environment. Like a magnifying glass placed on a social phenomenon, "Devolution" brings to the fore, in an intensely energetic atmosphere, the themes of the hierarchy organizing two different worlds, of territorial possession, of birth and death. This is a science-fiction choreographic endeavour which combines futuristic and archaic features and enhances the heroic mode characteristic of this Australian company.
Devolution, like an echo to the show, refers to the efforts of South Australians to overcome soil erosion, loss of species diversity… Thanks to technology, however, they make up with a land that seemed hostile, but whose they depends on for their survival. The challenge today is, according to Garry Stewart, to participate in this ecosystem: "Devolution characterizes this struggle and the sense of alienation that comes from the failure to be in agreement with that country." Stunning machines, huge and majestic metal robots
To support his claim, this expert in multimedia research and robotics has chosen to stage stunning machinery, huge metal and majestic robots, articulated humanoid monsters, sweeping across the plateau in big dry strides. In collaboration with the multi-disciplinary Canadian artist Louis-Philippe Demers and the British video artist Gina Czarnecki, Garry Stewart implements its machines in the middle of human beings becoming dwarfs in a land of giants, a universe of machines that monitor or supervise the dancers.
Humans and machines, two species battling to coexist
Between futurism and archaism, a delicate context that Garry Stewart managed to make tangible by an atmosphere of science fiction, the struggle between man and technology resonates quite vividly.
Devolution - Garry Stewart et l'Australian Dance Theatre
From November 14th to 18th at the Théatre de la ville de Paris
THEATRE DE LA VILLE
http://www.theatredelaville-paris.com/
2 place du Châtelet
75004 Paris
Metro / RER : Chatelet
Informations: 01 42 74 22 77
