Random Dance.
 Wayne
McGregor is bumbling with enthusiasm when it comes to discussing
his companies first Australian visit - mind you, he doesn't
seem the sort of man to dwell overlong on any single issue.
I catch the man between engagements - the day prior he'd been
in Durham Cathedral (in England's North) for a Random Dance
performance, and the following day he was off to Paris. His
company, based in Sadlers Wells on the outskirts of London perform
a lot around the UK... "We don't have to, but yeah, we do. We
like to go around the UK, there are about 12 cities we always
like to take new work to."
He cites the technical difficulties they sometimes face when it comes to venue suitability for their performances, but admits he loves the challenges of having the company performing to a broad base of audiences.
Indeed, Sadlers Wells is a name well known to many, since it was for many years the home of the English Ballet. Suffice it to say the rebuilt theatre is now home to Random Dance.
With a core contingent of about ten dancers, you'd describe Random as a middle-tier company, neither large nor compact. Given the sort of performance dance for which they're known, I point out that performances nowadays require more square metres per dancer than was usual with massed corps de ballet productions, a point not lost on him. Random are known for producing very physical dance.
'Nemesis' dates from 2002, and comes from ideas McGregor was tossing around at the time, "when I was most interested in looking at the human body in terms of technology and the extremities.
And of the work, 'Nemesis', the word itself is laden with meaning, of a darker purpose. "In a way that's quite deliberate," he answers brightly. "Nemesis was the Goddess of Vengeance, so there is a Kafkaesque overtone to the piece I suppose, with the idea of insects taking over in the third part of the piece.
"We're transforming the body and making it almost insect like, and people find it enormously disturbing." He's thoroughly pleased that some people choose to interpret it thus.
"In the first half we do pure dance in a series of environments which are pushing the body in different ways, and then in the second half there's these very strange articulated bodies that use animatronic limbs."
Weird metallic structures - limbs - seem to dominate the dance and the dancers, even though the sum of their parts is considerably less than that brought to the stage by the actual human dancers. This is one of the key concepts explored by McGregor as he was putting 'Nemesis' together.
In any human activity there's a syntax of the body - a 'normal' range of movements which is expected. Naturally, you might expect, when new elements are brought introduced this changes completely... new muscle groups are brought into play, new stances found... "Yes, and it effects gravity but also it effects the perception. I think there's a very normalised view of the body which most humans share, and the animatronics change all that.
"These completely change your co-ordination, your balance, your centre of gravity... the things you take for granted and can rely on as a dancer," he explains of the movement.
Then there's a third section to 'Nemesis'... "...which kind of integrates the notion of technology with the live body with quite a strange physicality. The work is very, very physical, and while it incorporated technology it's not about technology per se."
Alex Wheaton
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Random Dance perform 'Nemesis' at the Playhouse (Festival Theatre) from Tues 14 March.
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