Making a Scene with Gideon Obarzanek
SCENE ONE
External, day.
Wide shot as a man (Gideon Obarzanek) crosses half way across the road, he is on his mobile phone, trying to wind up the conversation unsuccessfully. He’s wearing dark grey jeans that were black once and a blue check shirt. A woman in a brown trench jacket (Lou Pardi) sits at an outside table at a café, GIDEON crosses the road after a few minutes, introduces himself and joins her. They begin to chat and LOU turns on a small dictaphone.
LOU: How’d it go in Melbourne?
Close up: GIDEON.
GIDEON OBARZANEK: Yeah, really well. Connected’s a very ambitious piece. I’ve been working with a lot of digital technology in the past, and Reuben’s work is completely mechanical.
LOU nods her head, taking in the necessary preamble.
GIDEON: I just thought it was amazing, the way that the materials transcended their concrete form and became both movement and space…It really made me think of the way dancers on stage shift from being a person and become a body.
WIDE SHOT. From an overhead bridge the connected installation is constructed by unseen forces. Dancers appear and begin to mingle with pedestrians on the footpath opposite the café. LOU watches them, amused and finds herself a question to break the vision.
LOU: Did you choreograph the dancers to move with the sculpture, or the other way around? A bit of both?
Three dancers fall into the installation and it responds in turn.
GIDEON: Mainly it’s the dancers who are pulling the sculpture. It has 220 strings which pull various little pieces and those 220 then go to 22 strings eventually. Those 22 strings are either attached to a number of dancers, or to one single dancer. The sculpture represents either a single body or a whole number of people. It hovers above the stage, suspended, and in a way becomes a representation of whatever it’s connected to.
LOU looks across the street where the dancers appear to shimmer, as if only partially real, or perhaps figments of her imagination.
LOU: And we watch?
GIDEON: In a performance that’s not enough: to have this singular relationship with the sculpture. The sculpture is built on stage, and in building it, there are these dance performances that are happening that are not connected at all to the sculpture and are much more about parts and particles and chaos coming together to form patterns and recognisable forms and relationships It parallels the construction of it.
WAITRESS: Can I get you a drink?
LOU: Can I have a Peppermint tea?
[Focus on dancers whilst Gideon’s voice continues in background.]
GIDEON: Flat white… And then, once it’s constructed, they connect to the sculpture and their movements animate, I mean literally animate – move it – and this sculpture becomes autonomous – it has its own movement, it’s connected to a motor and begins to do its own thing. Then we switch to a gallery place and all the dancers become gallery attendants – yeah, and it’s much more about this visual art piece.
LOU finds her vision disrupted by the shift in scene. The dancers across the street stop, mid movement and watch them.
GIDEON: I interviewed a lot of gallery attendants about their opinion about art, their opinion about their jobs and what goes on – so you hear all of this information about regular people’s opinion about art, regular people’s work and lives, in relation to art. So there are these very different, quite distinctive parts of the piece.
LOU becomes aware that she has lost herself in the clattering of her imaginations and finds her way back to her newly made acquaintance.
LOU: So have you got any other crazy collaborations up your sleeve, or is this the last one?
The footpath opposite fills with more and more people. The dancers appear to fade into the general public.
GIDEON: I’ve got one more crazy collaboration – I’m going to make a work with Richard Gill and the Victorian Opera… towards the end of this year… I’m going to have over fifty people on stage, all dancing, all singing, all talking, all moving. It’s going to be a large work, no technology, no set: just a number of people being crowds.
LOU:That’s going to be huge.
GIDEON: Literally, it’s going to be huge.
LOU: Aren’t you meant to be finding the new you? Have you found the new you?
The footpath clears, and LOU and GIDEON are alone. There is no traffic. The question seems to hang in the air for a moment until GIDEON realises she is referring to a replacement artistic director.
GIDEON: No not yet, I haven’t had time. This is my final year and I’m super busy, so my plan is to make it a very busy year – a very prolific year – I’m making this piece, I’ve been performing my solo “Faker” – I’m going to finish doing that in Melbourne and I’m making this new, big, large piece, and after that I’m going to take it easy a bit – in 2012. My aim is to do very little. I am kind of in a stretch where I think after 16 years of running Chunky Move, want to make more work, but I think I want to not be involved in running the organisation for a while.
LOU: Does it feel like a snail leaving its shell? Did you think when you started that there’d be a time where you could separate?
GIDEON: Yeah, I thought it’d be about five years after I started. I never had this intention to run an organisation for this period of time, but the thing that I continue to enjoy about Chunky Move, is that it’s an organisation that allows me essentially to do what I want to do. I can spend two months working on a solo piece with one dancer, I can spend three months working with 50 people, with only eight of them having any dance experience whatsoever – so there’s incredible flexibility. While it’s only been one company, we’ve done many and varied things. I think it’s why I’ve been there for so long actually, is that it hasn’t felt like the one thing. So why am I leaving?
LOU: You were about to answer that question.
GIDEON: Well, often I say that because it brings up the question: So what’s the problem?
LOU: It doesn’t have to be a problem.
GIDEON: It’s not a problem, it is – even though the projects are varied, there’s a certain familiarity that comes into place when you work out of one place for quite a long time, and I really want to try to shake that up for me as a maker of stuff.
LOU: So maybe not as dance focussed?
GIDEON: Mmm. I’ve been doing some writing in my work and I have more interest in that. When you push a dance company so far beyond its recognition it’s not very healthy, and I don’t want to be restrained by what the work at the end of the day needs to be too, so I think it’ll be good to be out on my own for a while.
LOU: You said in the press release that it feels a bit like ‘uncoupling a significant part of yourself’ Is that because you’re so close or because your experience after this will be so different.
GIDEON: I’ve lived and breathed it for a very long time, so to walk away from this organisation is, weirdly, to walk away from part of myself – and it’s part of my identity, it’s part of how I define myself. Who’s Gideon Obarzanek? Oh, the guy that runs Chunky Move. So once you take that away, what is there? I’m kind of a bit nervous of that.
LOU: Surely they’re nervous too. Chunky Move is what you created.
GIDEON: Chunky Move won’t be the Chunky Move it has been – but then that’s okay, its resources and its capacity are now part of the cultural fabric of Melbourne and Australia and there’s no reason why me leaving – it’ll radically change, depending who directs it but I think if it stays there as a resource and is focused about dance and contemporary culture and contemporary performance – that doesn’t change and I have no idea what it will be like.
GIDEON glances at his watch to check the time.
LOU: Do you need to go?
GIDEON: No I don’t, 2:30 is when I need to go to Sydney Theatre. But it’s not 2:30 yet.
LOU: The comment from the board member in the press release says once you find the new you, they’ll be implementing the new long term vision for Chunky Move. Does that vision exist yet?
GIDEON: That doesn’t exist until the person comes in. Some things we do know, we know that in 2012, my works will continue to tour internationally so the company will continue to do my works next year, while the new director is there, and so there’ll be this transition period between – they’ll be making work, my work will be touring. I think the board really values a company that’s inclusive, that not only commissions other artists but also uses its home as a place where other choreographers can make work, or run workshops and be involved in other workshops, and I think that will absolutely continue with whoever comes in – it’s been an absolute defining aspect of the company and I think that will continue, but beyond that I don’t really know.
FADE TO BLACK
SECTION TITLE OVERLAY: The Beginning
Chunky Move will be performing Connected at the Sydney Theatre from May 10th to May 14th at 8pm (Matinee on the 14th – 2pm)
Artscape (ABC1) is screening “Man on the Move”, a documentary covering the history of Chunky Move, at 10pm on Tuesday, May 10th. View the Trailer below.