From the welcoming automation of the "Biomet Data Rejuvenation Centre" that opens the performance, an unsettling tone is established. The clinical invitation to "breathe" while promising "exclusive, soothing and accurate data treatments" immediately evokes the seductive comfort of surrendering to algorithmic control. The audience is positioned not as spectators but as participants in "session 876," brilliantly blurring the line between observer and subject.
Plevey and Black, both formidable dancers with impressive credentials, demonstrate exceptional physical precision throughout. Plevey's background as founder of Australian Dance Party and her extensive collaborative experience across multiple disciplines is evident in the work's nuanced vocabulary. Black, a Helpmann Award winner with a strong background in both contemporary and commercial choreography, brings a magnetic intensity to her performance. Their bodies become powerful instruments of both conformity and resistance.
The choreography cleverly oscillates between moments of cold, data-driven precision and bursts of organic human desperation. The dancers are initially governed by invisible protocols, their movements regulated, monitored, and seemingly optimised. The progression toward system failure unfolds with masterful subtlety, manifesting first in nearly imperceptible glitches before cascading into full disintegration.
Jordan Hodge's lighting design and visuals create a mesmerising digital landscape that both frames and infiltrates the performers. Stark whites and digital projections transform the space into a data-processing laboratory before fracturing into chaos as the systems begin to fail. This visual language works in hand with Sia Ahmad's sound design, which builds an immersive audio environment that shifts from sterile electronic precision to disquieting distortion.
The Dataset elevates beyond conceptual exercise with its emotional resonance. As the performers navigate the collapse of their data-driven world, we witness not just technical breakdown but existential crisis. Who are we when the systems that define us fail? The work poses this question with haunting clarity as Plevey and Black rediscover embodied knowledge and human connection.
The piece resonates particularly strongly in our current cultural moment, as we grapple with questions about AI integration and digital dependence. As the creators note, this "surreal work" offers "a glimpse into imaginings of a future where data is so deeply centered in what we do – perhaps not so far away." The metaphor of data treatment as beauty enhancement, "like a beauty treatment that sculpts and crafts who we are," provides a potent framework for examining our willing surrender to algorithmic improvement.
The Dataset ultimately reminds us that beneath our digital interfaces lies "our most complex and sensitive data centre - the body." In its final moments, as the performers reconnect with their physical intelligence, with each other, and the audience, the work offers neither technophobic warnings nor simplistic solutions, but rather perhaps an invitation to conscious engagement with the systems that increasingly define us.
The Australian Dance Party team have crafted a work that lingers in the mind, a testament to dance's unique ability to process complex societal shifts through the wisdom of embodied experience.
WHERE: Parramatta Riverside Theatres, as part of THAT`S TWO, THANK YOU Dance Festival
WHEN: Until 5 April 2025
TICKETS and DETAILS: https://riversideparramatta.com.au/whats-on/the-dataset/
FESTIVAL PRODUCER: FORM Dance Projects
(images: Lorna Sim)
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