Amy F's PLAF Diary for Thursday, September 17

Performance: Mortal Engine (Chunky Move) (Future Performances)

I had really high expectations for Mortal Engine. I was thinking it may turn out to be the best thing I've seen ever. Or it might turn out to be the worst thing ever. It was neither, but still ranks pretty high on my short list of awesome productions I've seen in my life.

A show from the Australian dance company Chunky Move, Mortal Engine makes use of sound and movement responsive light projections. None of the video work is pre-recorded, everything you see on stage is being created as it happens. The performance takes place on a raked projection surface. On occasion, the surface raises to become vertical. The dance is the sort of kind of popular contemporary choreography where bodies writhe and squirm on stage in a proto-human type way. Except in this case, the choreography is accompanied by splotches of light that traces the dancers' movements and merges with the dancers, creating a sort of dialogue between human body and light source. Sometimes, the light also grows out from the dancer's body in an ever repeating pattern. For the nerds out there, at one point my boyfriend leaned over to me and simply whispered "glider gun".

Portions of the show were simply lightbeams and projections responding to loud, thumping, and occasionally high pitched sound effects. (Side note: the sound was incredibly loud. I'm not suggesting you bring ear plugs, because that defeats the purpose. But so you know if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.) I'm not sure I enjoyed these portions nearly as much as when the dancers were onstage. At one point I thought, this is like watching a screensaver, except a thousand times bigger and much, much louder. At another point I thought, okay, this is like being at one of those silly laser shows. However, when the dancers were on, oh, then it was spectacular. At one point, two dancers stand in front of the vertical projection surface, holding hands. They start to pull away from each other, and a creaking cracking sound as if they were digging themselves out of mud or clay filled the room. Shadow streaks on the projection followed their movements. I don't know what happened in my brain, but I was convinced that they were actually covered in mud, that they were actually struggling against some physical barrier, even though I knew they weren't.

I spent much of the show going back and forth between thinking, hm, this is kind of cheesy and then thinking, hm, yes, this is pretty cool. It was the final scene, however, that pushed me over the edge into "omg that was so awesome" territory. I won't reveal too much of it, because if you go, I don't want to ruin what was the most visually stunning and confusing thing I've seen onstage EVER. Suffice to say, at that point, I wasn't even sure I was actually sitting in a theater anymore and felt as though I'd stumbled into some other dimension.

Festival Rating: 20,000 Hz