sarma

A lone denizen, dancer Chris Haring, stood between two large loudspeakers that emitted traffic drone. A disenfrachised metropolite whose nominated flesh became the locus of mutations and permutations for 70 minutes.

Those in the sold-out audience – local doctors and engineers, artists and computer geeks alike – paid for the right show to be suitably impressed, for there were apparent winning points in the world premiere of D.A.V.E. (Digital Amplified Video Engine).

With his fine physique, Haring dived into marvellous curves and floor rotations, demonstrating contemporary European dance techniques seldom – but ought more be – seen in this part of the world.

Sonic aficionados would have rushed to buy the soundtrack of fluvial yet groovesome thuds by multimedia meister, Klaus Obermaier, except that there was none.

Digital pundits wondered why they never tried dabbling in high-art with the same and fairly facile video wizardry that Obermaier had conjured and put into persuasive illusionary effects.

So it was that the Viennese duo found warm communion with their easily-charmed audience. But that is not to discount some of the deeper thematics in D.A.V.E., surface-candy though it appeared on a fundamental level.

Often, the interfacing of the real and virtual body was an enthralling visual and cerebral discombobulation. Images were successively projected onto Haring’s rotating body – a site of literal revolution where it was hard to discern the body from its simulacra.

In dislocating orthodox perceptions, D.A.V.E. was very much an intellectual moot-show. Binary dissolutions and notions of skin and genetics regarding the human body today and tomorrow came into intriguing play.

After Xavier Le Roy’s debut here last year, D.A.V.E. is a timely and further initiation to the current opus of European dance works that scrutinise the body-subject. It summons a re-thinking of the meaning of our corporeal vessel, its condition and identity, especially under technological intervention.