“The idea of 247 Days started upon my arrival in the country,” remembers Chunky Move Artistic Director Anouk van Dijk. “That was about 247 days from the opening night.” Those 247 days are almost over as van Dijk’s second production with Chunky Move prepares to premiere Melbourne’s Dance Massive festival.
“It’s been great so far,” states van Dijk when asked to reflect on her time at Chunky Move so far. “I started seven months ago, in July. I was quite involved in the company already before I arrived in Australia. We had a great start off with making An Act of Now for the 2012 Melbourne Festival. It won a Critics Award and got great reactions from the audience. Very quickly from then we went on to start rehearsals for 247 Days. I have a fantastic dance team surrounding me and I’m very much looking forward to kicking off this next one.”
The Critics Award, run by The Age, was a surprise to van Dijk, although she was happy with An Act of Now and the reaction of audiences and performers alike. “It was wonderful to feel that peers acknowledge that I’m bringing something fresh and new to the company and to Chunky Move. It was a very warm reception for me.”
Chunky Move is now producing An Act of Now for another festival, Dance Massive. “I believe it’s really vital for artists and their development to perform and be seen by audiences in different contexts. Festivals are great for that. Melbourne loves festivals and the city is really good at putting its energy towards them. It’s totally logical that we have Dance Massive here and I think there’s a lot that can be developed in years to come. I hope it can create new audiences and scope for dance in Australia. There are already quite a lot of dancers coming from around the world to Dance Massive so I hope it will keep growing – more and more venues and working together to realise the vision.”
So what is 247 Days all about? “It’s going to reflect the dialogue, the discussions and the discoveries I’ve made in my seven months or so in Australia. It’s going to reflect my perspective on what surrounds me, what I think is right and what I believe is the norm here and try and explore different perspectives within that. I wanted to go more inward, more personal with the dances. Last time we did this huge site specific work in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, which although it was very condensed in terms of space, it was really grand in scale and idea. For this piece I wanted to go in and reflect on all kinds of things – sound, image, thoughts, feelings and reflect on where I am in time right now.
“Every new piece is some kind of response to the previous one that you did. If you did something big maybe you want to do something intimate, if you did something small maybe you want to go a bit more flashy. If your previous work was very hardcore and physical then maybe your next one is more delicate. There’s this dialogue from work to work. What’s nice about the next work this time is that it’s premiering at Dance Massive which is very special not just for Melbourne but for Australia. It’s very rare that so much dance can be seen in such a small amount of time. This concentration of people and audiences is going to be a really interesting place for premiering a new work.
“Every work is a reflection on what’s happening around me and how it’s affecting me personally. There’s always the bigger picture and the smaller within one work. There are different ways they manifest themselves depending on what I’m doing. If I’m working more with actors it will have a more vocal side for example. I also believe that reflecting on how to look at things from different perspectives is very important for all of us right now. You can get information from so many different sources – on politics, whatever – it creates confusion. There are so many things happening, but where are you at, what are the things which affect you personally?”
But what about the craft? What’s different for van Dijk and company this time around? “This work we’re using sound and the manipulation of sound and singing. We also work with text much more than we did in An Act of Now. It’s something that will affect the audience quite directly. You’ll hear the voices of the dancers in the sound score as well as live. It creates this very intense experience, it can be very uplifting how it can affect you.”
BY JOSH FERGEUS
