Thursday 11 June 2026

Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)

I’ve almost recovered from the hard-hitting, industrial-strength assault on all our senses that dragged us kicking and screaming out of our comfort zones to confront a nihilistic, apocalyptic vision of a machine-controlled future, or is the performance’s portrayal of the future actually a very near dystopian present? A timely work of art, as we as a society debate the place of AI in our culture and we grapple with the basic question – what level of technology do we really need and at what point does it become an existential threat?

Chunky Move under Artistic Director and choreographer, Antony Hamilton have nailed this question and its answers, and cold-riveted it to the steel girders of the futuristic set (Ashley Buchanan) of U>N>I>T>E>D. Every aspect of this production was engineered to a single purpose, all the production elements working together to create a seamless entertaining show. It unfolded before our eyes with the irresistible inevitability of computer code.

As we entered the space, the sound design set the scene, with dark lighting and some vague distant female vocals. One mechanical creature hunched up on the floor emerged from the dimness and came to “life”. Then all hell broke loose. Bali-based Gabber Modus Operandi’s score overwhelmed us. (Fun fact: As Antony Hamilton says in the interview below: in the early 90s, Rotterdam techno was invented by the Balinese diaspora who emigrated to their former coloniser’s homeland. The connection between Balinese Gamelan and techno is their ability to create a trance-like state through percussion, and you can detect some gamelan influences in the score) The intensity of the techno beats in this show subsumed all that lay before it. No wonder we were offered earplugs on the way in. (Even so it was too loud for a few in the audience who left early covering their ears.) In parts of the sound design there were squishy ‘organic’, sounds that brought to mind scenes from The Matrix movies where humans were no more than energy/food sources for the machines.

The lighting design (Benjamin Cisterne & Nick Moloney) was all-pervasive, with red high intensity lights flashing right at us blindingly, the structures started strobing in neon colours and ominous green or red ‘eyes’ gave the machine a malevolent animal appearance. Even the costumes (Future Loundry) contained computer-controlled lights – think Schwarzenegger’s relentless unstoppable nightmarish Terminator.

Now the costumes deserve special mention for their ingenuity, versatility and their incredible employment in conveying meaning. Creature Technology Co. were responsible for the Exoskeleton Design & Fabrication that united man with machine. Robot-like arms were attached to various parts of the dancers’ bodies and in turn connected them to the mainframe of the machine. The narrative (if one was intended) was man’s willingness to embrace technology, possibly to our detriment and the near impossibility to disengage.

The talented troupe of six dancers manipulated the arms throughout, constantly adjusting them and attaching and reattaching them. It crossed my mind that they spent too much time with the tech and not enough time dancing. But isn’t that the exact metaphor of how much time we spend dealing with passwords, 3 tier verification and face recognition and not enough time actually creating.

The dancers were robotically brilliant in the execution of the machine dances, twitching and jerking in sync, like iron filings being manipulated by a magnet, or atoms by an electrode. Occasionally a human arm or two would break free and start moving in expressive arcs and swirls, but inevitably the claw would be re-attached. Only right at the end, some of the troupe achieved total freedom stripped of their prostheses, but discovered their inability to move easily and fluently, stumbling and trying once more to dance. Having said that, here the ‘free’ dancing was magnificent.

So much design and technical brilliance went into this production to create the meanings we gleaned from it, but in the end it was the dancers and the choreography that told the story. Antony Hamilton and the Chunky Move team are to be congratulated for this confronting, but immensely rewarding work.

Season runs at Carriageworks to 14 June.

You can listen to a recent interview with Antony Hamilton below: