In the long history of dance and music, the choreography on stage has traditionally reflected what has already been written in the score. But in The Dance Machine, a collaboration between choreographer Jasmine Vardimon and visual artist Guy Bar Amotz, it is the dancer who creates the music as she moves.
Bar Amotz invents sound installations in which visual stimuli are picked up from the environment and interpreted as music. He builds parts of the technology into his sculptures, which mix moulded fibreglass with found objects. The result is a mix of techno-fantasy and old-fashioned junk art, and when it interacted with Vardimon's choreography on Friday it was as eccentric as any dance event I've seen or heard.
The classical austerity of Tate Britain's Duveen Gallery added to the surreal mix of old and new. Tiny cameras and cables were hooked up to huge industrial-looking speakers while a pair of Bar Amotz's sculpted sound systems were carried like rucksacks on the backs of two motionless men. Both systems were moulded to look like the carapaces of extra-terrestrial life forms that looked as if they had come from the set of the film Alien: one had a section of spinal column stuck on its surface.
In the middle was Vardimon, performing a five-minute solo whose moves were adroitly designed to work the system. Sensors were activated by the speed of her dancing and by the colour red. As she moved, wearing a scarlet wristband, sounds started to swirl magically round the gallery.
Vardimon is always a compelling dancer to watch, but it was frustratingly hard to see exactly how she was influencing the sounds (a thumping heartbeat, a revving engine and a musical jingle) until we were let loose to play with the system ourselves. This proved to be a vaguely thrilling experience, like being put inside a huge computer game. We shadowboxed the engine into hectic overdrive, we jogged the heartbeat into a coronary, we waved around anything red we could get hold of.
We were enthusiastic but crude, and the second time Vardimon performed her demo, we could appreciate just how smart her choreographic judgments had been. Even so, this mix of performance, installation and audience participation made for an oddly inconclusive evening. By the end it was hard to figure out whether we had witnessed an extraordinary new departure for dance, sculpture and music or whether we had just spent an hour in an intriguing but forgettable cul-de-sac.
