Chunky Move, 4/4 Review ★★★★★

The palette is starkly monochrome, the stage is bare bar a few basic props, and the movement has the daunting rigour of a mathematical equation which slowly resolves itself against a three-dimensional sound score that zings all around the auditorium with clicks, pops and buzzing.

4/4 is the work of Chunky Move’s co-artistic director Antony Hamilton, ‘the most densely complex choreographic work’ he’s ever made, as he put it. Impossible to pigeonhole, and all the more interesting for that, its language borrows from contemporary dance, krump, free-style hip hop and house.

Eight dancers - four male and four female - dressed in Paula Levis’s casual urban black, stand on stage as the audience files in. The sole props at this point are two low wheeled platforms. As the lights go down and the stage enters the mobile penumbra of Bosco Shaw’s integral light design, the dancers slowly climb onto the platforms, four each.

At first their movement focuses on their upper bodies: arms stretch out or curl up in front to their torsos, hands swivel, heads lean sideways, while knees bend rhythmically. Both platforms follow similar choreographies, but not in unison; rather they seem to complement each other like different pieces of the same puzzle.

Evolving in an episodic structure, the movement gradually gets bigger. They leave the platforms and cover more of the stage. Facing the audience two women perform gentle robotics, while behind them a further two platforms are wheeled on stage.

The dancers use those platforms, later joined by two large box speakers, to shape different configurations, and as they do so their dancing becomes more expansive, using the whole body, exploring the possibilities of each structure, and covering the entirety of the stage.

Alistair Macindoe’s sound design provides rhythm and ambience, but doesn’t demand compliance from the dancers; Shaw’s lighting alternates between soft focus and sharp, lightning flashes of white light. Blurry projections of black lines swirl discreetly on the white backcloth.

4/4 builds up to a climactic finale, where the props are built into what looks like a sea-going vessel wheeled around the stage, with one woman standing on a speaker like a defiant figurehead, as lights and sound slowly dissipate.

Rigour and choreographic coherence performed with absolute control by Chunky Move’s eight dancers make for an engrossing 60 minutes. 4/4 was well received when it premiered in Melbourne last year, and went on to win a prestigious Green Room Award.