Attractor
“Watching this work is an electric experience;it is a highly successful collaboration between Australian and international artists that is evenly balanced and rich"Sydney Morning Herald / The Age
Attractor brings together sensational Indonesian music duo, Senyawa and two of Australia’s leading dance companies, Dancenorth and Lucy Guerin Inc to create a unique music/dance ritual.
Senyawa’s performance reinterprets the Javanese tradition of entering trance through dance and music as a powerful secular present-day form. Their sound borrows from the metal bands they listened to as teenagers – Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden – and Indonesian ritual and folk idioms. Their music and performance is influenced by forces in nature to take the audience into a transformative state outside of organised belief systems.
As the performance unfolds, Senyawa’s unique fusion of hand-made electrified stringed instruments with opera style and heavy metal voice slowly builds to a euphoric pitch. The exceptional dancers are propelled into wild physical abandonment and ecstatic release, that transmits to the audience as a visceral empathic experience. The demarcation between dancer and non-dancer, audience and performer and the professional and the amateur dissolves as the performance transitions into a large-scale dance event.
Credits
Direction & Choreography Gideon Obarzanek and Lucy Guerin
Music Senyawa - Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi
Dancers Samantha Hines, Mason Kelly, Jenni Large, Ashley McLellan, Josh Mu, Felix Sampson, Georgia Rudd, and Jack Ziesing Produced by Dancenorth
Dancenorth Artistic Director Kyle Page
Dancenorth Associate Artistic Director Amber Haines
Lighting Designer Ben Bosco Shaw
Costume Designer Harriet Oxley
Rehearsal Director Amber Haines
Acknowledgements
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government's Major Festivals Initiative, managed by Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne, Brisbane Festival and WOMADelaide.
Performance History
WOMADelaide
Kaurna / Adelaide
2017
White Bird
Portland / USA
2017
Centre for the Art of Performance, UCLA
Los Angeles / USA
2017
Brisbane Festival
Meanjin / Brisbane
2017
AsiaTOPA
Naarm / Melbourne
2017
Perth Festival
Boorloo / Perth
2018
Australian Performing Arts Market
Naarm / Melbourne
2018
Commonwealth Games Australia
Yugambeh / Gold Coast
2018
Brighton Festival
Brighton / United Kingdom
2018
December Dance
Bruges / Belgium
2018
PuSH Festival
Vancouver / Canada
2019
Stanford
Stanford / USA
2019
Joyce Theatre
New York / USA
2019
Clarice Performing Arts Centre
Maryland / USA
2019
Festival Cultural de Mexico
Guadalajara / Mexico
2019
Spring Performing Arts Festival
Utrecht / Holland
2019
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