Faker
Chunky Move
CUB Malthouse
23 March – 2 April
Tickers: $23 – $32
Gideon Obarzanek is anything but a Faker in this solo show from Chunky Move. If the story he tells is in fact true then he is actually the very antithesis of the title.
Where I have felt like much modern dance I’ve seen lately has attempted to be new and innovative, Obarzanek’s show was effortlessly successful. The combination of dancing, dialogue and staging in Faker, a refreshingly clean production, is much like its solo performer who candidly shares a private letter which, to all intents and purposes, is a humiliating expose of his personality. The personality of an ego-maniacal, chauvinistic and unoriginal choreographer. However, the delicate reenactment of the letter by Obarzanek is so charming that it’s impossible to find him guilty of the scathing words, especially in his mature ability to pay respect to the articulate and biting criticism by providing it an audience.
Each act of the forty-five minute show was a balance between monologue and what at times had to be improvised dance. The ‘letter’ was read verbatim from a lap top placed on a nondescript desk at the very back of an otherwise empty stage. At the end of each rant the prose was broken down and expressed in free thinking, free spirited movement.
Obarzanek is a very charming man and he won the audience within moments of lunging into his lovely interpretation of the increasingly common modern pass-time of dancing and singing to oneself with head phones on. The tunelessness and the wild, uncharted choreography was reminiscent of times I spent as a kid trying to choreograph a new video clip for Madonna’s latest song in a messy, innocent and sincere manner that comes so naturally to children. Maybe it was the beautiful autumn day outside and the relaxed Sunday feeling, but everyone in the audience laughed and smiled as Gideon twirled and acted out the dictated experience of his former pupil. The honesty and sense of sharing was further emphasised as the audience spent the main portion of the show in plain sight of each other, fully lit by the floor lights, as Gideon sang, talked and danced directly for us and his invisible but ever present critic.
Amidst his lithe bouncing around there remained a strong back bone of classical training and intelligent choreography. He is undeniably a graceful and strong dancer, I felt it was even more endearing to watch his attempts to hide it through his representation of the creative process; drama sports and exercises one is taught in art classes to “unknot the subconscious”.
There was one moment, however, in which Gideon treated the audience to something particularly special. Perhaps he was sending a silent “up yours” to the omnipresent writer but after he stripped to his bare essentials and politely requested to have the lights dimmed he danced for us. There wasn’t an ounce of pretense or humour and his skilled body moved flawlessly with the hymnal track, it was actually breathtaking.
I think, in his dark way, this was an answer to a brutally gutting critique. Where he may have let his former student and collaborator down, he made up for it by giving us, the public, something so energetic and real that I left with the gratification of at last seeing something truly heartfelt and original.
