Review: Run - A Performance Engine

As published in the Sun Herald

Run: A Performance Engine
Performance Space at Carriageworks
Until 29 August
Tickets $15-30
Bookings 1300 723 038
Critic’s Rating 6/10


In the three years that the CarriageWorks arts space has been running, this performance piece from De Quincey Co is the most interesting attempt so far in looking at the way the human body interacts with the enormous industrial setting of these old train yards at Eveleigh.

Tess de Quincey has choreographed her performers (Tom Davies, Peter Fraser, Victoria Hunt and Linda Luke) like ghosts from the past, to dive, float, run, swing and play all over enormous steel structures hanging from rafters of this old factory.

With a grainy black-and-white video of up-close and wide-angle shots of the performers projected on the rear wall, stunning moments of body on steel are created.

Using a 1980s style of movement called ‘Body Weather’, which is starting to look dated, it’s a striking production because of the performers’ placement on the moving steel structure.

[This is made even more so by some recited text from Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that not only tests the concentration of the performers as they navigate their way around the space but is at odds with the more graceful theatrical moments created through the choreography.]

In many ways, this is a living, performance-based installation and a reminder of the fragility of the human body against the enormity of the giant structures we build.

With live sound created and performed by Dale Gorfinkel, Run has a quality of risk about it, creating a world where anything could happen.