Zero Zero
Info:
Zero Zero is a work by two of Australia’s foremost physical performers, Tony Yap and Yumi Umiumare, and media and sound artist Matthew Gingold.
Zero Zero explores the liminal spaces between the visible and the invisible. The work charts the choreographic landscape formed at the intersection of physical, cultural, spiritual and technological boundaries.From the immediacy and simplicity of the human body lit by candles and incense, to the use of the latest technology, Zero Zero transports the viewer with its immersive environment and evocative, trance-like physical explorations.
Yap and Umiumare are reconnecting their duo practice after making major solo works apart. Their fifteen-year series ‘How could you even begin to understand?’, was acclaimed in Australia and internationally.
“…butoh and its multifarious manifestations of a body … draws on traditions of the ecstatic body – the closest to a shamanistic trance most of us are likely to see … another masterful work.” – Jonathan Marshall, writing on Yap and Umiumare’s How could you even begin to understand?
Matthew Gingold is a media and sound artist and programmer at the cutting edge of new technologies in performance, recently recognised by a prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art.
Choreographers and performers: Tony Yap, Yumi Umiumare
Director and composer: Matthew Gingold
Additional design and production: Paula van Beek
Producer: Kath Papas Productions
Original concept by Yumi Umiumare & Sean O’Brien
Early choreographic developments of Zero Zero occurred in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia in 2010 and 2011. Yap and Umiumare presented a dance-only version of the work in the curated ‘Return to Sender’ season, put together by Jeff Khan and Paul Gazzola for Performance Space in November 2011. The premiere season of the completed work was presented in Melbourne in February 2013.
Reviews
“…an intensely meditative duet, heightened by Gingold’s percussive score and the low lighting. It moves from the quotidian – Umiumare listens to a clock raadio and brushes her teeth, while Yap seems to be asleep, twisting and crying out in turbulent dreams – to an evocation of the sacred.” – Alison Croggon, ABC Arts
“…an absorbing puzzle of structure and feeling.” – Andrew Fuhrmann, The Daily Review
“As the performance unfolded, Yap and Umiumare appeared in beautiful harmony with one another. Linked by an unseen magnetic pull between the two they, true to magnetic reference, never touched until the very end… […] This work, three years in development…is beautifully stripped back. And it is in this peeled back state that clarity is seen.” – Gracia Haby, Fjord Review
“Throughout the piece, Matthew Gingold’s sound design unites the two dancers like a third body that breathes, gasps and sighs with them, incorporating natural and synthetic sounds from rippling water to tinnitis¬inducing high tones or pummelling rumblings. Like the dance, the sound binds the profane and the sacred, which merge and are parsed by turns.” – Ursula Dawkins, Real Time Arts
“Lighting design beautifully crafted by Paula van Beek, is used to demonstrate the sense of self-reflection …” – Nithya Iyer, Melbourne.Arts.Fashion
Performances:
14 & 15 October 2014, Dance Territories 2014, Dancehouse and Melbourne Festival
18 & 19 October 2013, Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Bogota, Colombia.
Premiere season Thursday 21 – Sunday 24 February 2013 at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne.
Web:
Tony Yap Company
Yumi Umiumare
Matt Gingold
Support:
Zero Zero has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, City of Melbourne, Besen Family Foundation, and the Australia Latin America Foundation.
Media credits:
First and third images by Matthew Gingold; second image still from videography of fortyfivedownstairs Melbourne season by Mike Hornblow.
