Stepping out in a new direction

AFTER being at the helm of leading dance company Chunky Move for 16 years, acclaimed choreographer Gideon Obarzanek is stepping down as artistic director at the end of this year to spend more time on what he loves – dancing.

Obarzanek will continue to be involved with the company until the end of 2012, but will focus on travelling overseas with touring productions of his work.

“There will be a crossover period in 2012 between myself and a new artistic director,” Obarzanek told The AJN.

“I’m keen to be involved in new dance projects and hope to be spending more time in the studio and less time in the office.”

Obarzanek lived on a kibbutz in Israel until he was eight, when his family returned to Melbourne. He became interested in dance towards the end of high school, which led to him deferring a science course at university to study at the Australian Ballet School. Obarzanek danced with the Queensland Ballet, the Sydney Dance Company and other dance companies, before founding Chunky Move in 1995.

Under his guidance as artistic director, Chunky Move received wide acclaim. In 2008, it won awards for Best Dance Work for Glow and Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production for Mortal Engine at the Helpmann Awards. In 2009, Mortal Engine received an honorary mention in the Prix Ars Electronica awards in the Hybrid Arts category.

Obarzanek is currently working on two Chunky Move productions. Connected is an innovative production featuring an enormous sculpture of moving parts with strings connected to the dancers. It opens in Melbourne this week and will be staged in Sydney in May before touring in Korea and the United States.

“There’s been talk of going to Israel with a Chunky Move production over the years, but it did not eventuate, so I hope that towards the end of the year we will be able take Connected there,” he says.

For Connected, Obarzanek drew on the talents of American kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin, who built the sculpture in his Californian workshop and shipped it to Melbourne.

“I met Reuben during a visit to the United States in 2009,” he recalls. “His sculptures are in motion and transcend their concrete form. I found them quite mesmerising and thought that they could go well with dance.”

Hot on the heels of Connected will be Faker, which marks a rare opportunity for Obarzanek to perform on stage. He will also make some minor changes to the production that premiered in Sydney last September.

Faker arose out of a two-week workshop Obarzanek undertook with a young dancer. In the production, Obarzanek performs the dual roles of choreographer and the questioning protégé, as he peels back the layers of the creative processes for both artist and as mentor.

“It’s a much more storytelling type of work than Connected where I describe what went on in the studio and how it didn’t come about.”

Obarzanek says he stopped performing in his late 20s, but the routine has returned very quickly.

“You have to focus and concentrate; I’m back to the discipline that I did when dancing. I’ve been used to being on the outside looking in and having very competent dancers performing.

“One of the motivations for me to do Faker was so that I could reconnect with the things that drew me to dance in the first place.”

Venue: Sydney Theatre Walsh Bay, 22 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay
Dates/Time: 10 – 14 May @ 8.00pm, and 14 May @ 2.00pm
Bookings: https://boxoffice.sydneytheatre.org.au or +612 9250 1999

REPORT: DANNY GOCS

PHOTO: Choreographer Gideon Obarzanek