Australian Dance Theatre Returns to Melbourne with PROXIMITY, 8/15-18

After a 10-year absence from Melbourne, Australian Dance Theatre returns with the technologically remarkable Proximityfrom Thursday 15 - Saturday 18 August at Arts Centre Melbourne's Playhouse. Proximity is presented by Arts Centre Melbourne following the production's critically acclaimed debut at the 2012 Adelaide Festival and a European Tour in early 2013.

Combining art and technology, Proximity is a masterful demonstration in dance, videography and optical illusions. Throughout the performance, nine phenomenal dancers train video cameras on each other to capture, magnify and distort the choreography on large screens upstage. The result is a breathtaking, real-time video panorama that liberates the body from everyday understanding and physics.

Artistic Director and choreographer Garry Stewart worked with French video engineer Thomas Pachoud in Proximity to create an astonishing dialogue between dance and real-time video manipulation.

"After a few calls to various contacts in Paris we were put in touch with Thomas Pachoud, a young video engineer and computer programmer who came to work with me on what was essentially an artistic blind date," said Garry Stewart, who wanted to use live dancers and video projection to explore the way our brains neurologically perceive the world around us.

"One of the greatest challenges in making Proximity has been to discover ways in which these complex ideas could be manifested through live video manipulation. Thankfully we have had the ingenious Thomas Pachoud to do this. Thomas spent several months creating a palette of sublime video effects that form the fundamental materials of Proximity in a seamless relationship with the dancers."

Formed in Adelaide in 1965, Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) is one of Australia's foremost dance companies and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015. Constantly in demand both in Australia and internationally, ADT is one of Australia's most active touring dance companies. In 2013 alone, ADT will have toured two simultaneous productions to over 25 cities across the globe.

Under the artistic direction of Garry Stewart since 1999, the company has embarked on a distinctive artistic trajectory, often exploring collisions of arts and science, that has won the company numerous accolades and critical acclaim. Alongside Proximity, ADT's technological oeuvre includes the spectacular Devolution, which was created in collaboration with French-Canadian roboticist Louis-Philippe Demers, and Held, which saw photographer Lois Greenfield onstage snapping real-time photographs of the performance.

At the age of 20 Garry Stewart ceased his university studies in social work to commence training to become a dancer. An alumnus of the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne, Stewart has danced with a number of companies, including Australian Dance Theatre, Queensland Ballet and One Extra Company, before he began his career as a choreographer.

Stewart recently choreographed a new work for The Australian Ballet called Monument, which responds to the architecture of Canberra's Parliament House, and is currently Thinker in Residence at Deakin University's Motion.Lab where he is assisting technicians to develop new ways of using motion capture, CG animation, 3D stereography and game engine technology for live dance performance. Stewart is the first arts figure to be appointed to this role at Deakin University.

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