Chunky Move, the company behind U>N>I>T>E>D, describes itself as bold, ambitious and highly original. This Perth Festival instalment is beyond original and is absolutely like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
The most striking element is the industrial design of the dancers’ mechanical limbs. While each unit is explicitly industrial, bulky and maximal in its appearance you can’t help but feel each performer is still organic and grasshopper like.
This juxtaposition is replicated in the choreography. The work leans heavily on repetition and accumulation. Machine like movements recur, phrases return, rhythms loop and mutate. But at the same time, the ensemble’s routines come together like a group of cells – heaving and growing, merging and separating.
This constant and deliberate clash means you cannot peal your eyes away.
U>N>I>T>E>D. GRPhoto
Every element of the production creates a synergy with the movement and machinery. For example, the limbs move to attach and slide along the lighting rig to create abstract shapes and heights which elevate each movement by the performers.
Sound and lighting plays an equally important role. The score (or soundscape) is not there to guide us gently but to test our endurance. It pulses, drones, fractures- again both machinelike and organic. Unity here is not presented as soothing or easy; it’s loud, messy, and occasionally uncomfortable in its rhythm.
The lighting design is equally sophisticated and utilises the incredible height and depth of the Heath Ledger Theatre to communicate routines of combat, cleansing, growth and reconciliation.
U>N>I>T>E>D must be the 2026 instalment in Perth Festival’s long and reliable history of showcasing obscenely original and creative dance productions that will stay in your memory for long into the future.