Review: METADATA is an Evolutionary Must-See at Riverside Parramatta

"There is an art to science, and a science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole" - Isaac Asimov

No art form challenges an audience members' faculties for interpretation, for connection to their deepest creative instincts, and for stretching their imagination to fit an unspoken narrative or regular order as contemporary dance. De Quincey Co's latest offering Metadata, a two-piece performance investigating the relationship between human life and the building blocks of life itself, makes no exceptions for this challenge. Performed in the style of abstract and intellectual performance they've become known for, Tess de Quincey and Peter Fraser brought Pure Light and Moths & Mathematics to Riverside Theatre Parramatta for a remarkable, multidimensional experience.

Pure Light took on the beginnings of evolution, the strength and stability of which made almost a mockery of the human frame, with De Quincey evoking movements at times akin to a marionette, at other times an insect. Bordered by lighting designed by Sian James-Holland as inspired by Dan Flavins, De Quincey was the anthropological response to how humans have experience their own form of photosynthesis. Conversely, Moths & Mathematic leaps forward to seemingly demonstrate what the mass multiplication of the spaces has done to damage and develop elements of our environment, combining movement that transitioned from linear to chaotic with almost Armageddon-like live animation performed by Boris Morris Bagattini.

Asimov's quote makes short work of a very involved and fascinating work that absolutely hooked audience members up to life's most profound and confounding questions in everything from physics to sustainable practices. Metadata juxtaposed mandalas and abstract composition with extraordinary expressions of face and gait, looking like stream of consciousness but meticulously collaborated over many years. Pimmon & Warren Burt developed the sound structures from a multitude of instruments rudimentary, contemporary and technological, even taking cues from DNA to create the warped and wild score.

Metadata was an experience that evoked an appreciation for the enormity that plagues the collective consciousness of our generation, and in its volatile delivery concluding in connection of self with other with environment, summarised the problems we genuinely need to solve in society. Marvellous.

More information about De Quincey Co here.
Metadata was presented as part of Form Dance Projects' Dance Bites 2016