Audible

AUDIBLE is an exaggerated comment on technology, and our pursuit of connectivity in a digital environment. The content deals with a replacement of social skills, ideas of virtual propinquity and hyper-communication. The work uses repeated imagery of a bizarre contact sport, bodies launching at one another, flying through space and colliding, but with unfulfilled relation. The content allows for entrance of humor and occasional theatricality, helping break up the sheer execution of near non-stop physically pounding movement. The simplicity of the stage/lights/costumes highlights the complexity of the movement and relationships between bodies. Red wrestling headgear double as a symbol for both a protective unit and headphones, allowing the dancers to “tune out” from the world around them, safe from the vulnerability of face-to-face interaction.

In AUDIBLE, five athletic performers jump, dive and collide to create a rough-and-tumble dance, transforming today’s hyper-communication into a highly kinetic contact sport. The audience experiences wave after wave of fast, floor-pounding movement, punctuated by moments of complete stillness and piercing silence. Backed by electronic industrial soundscapes and experimental club beats, AUDIBLE explores and exaggerates the overwhelming and often abrasive changes to how we choose, or are now forced, to connect.  From rapid-fire isolations to high-flying feats, this work tests the limits of each performer with its daring athleticism, powerful unison and awkwardly intimate human encounters.

This piece was the collective’s first full-length work, where their kinetic language and first collaborative efforts evolved. The piece has since toured each season with over 50 performances to date, solidifying 605’s place in both hip-hop and contemporary dance audiences across Canada, and now into the USA.

“…605 Collective emerged like an antidote, kicking it up more than a few notches. The five dancers that comprise 605 are electrifying… Influenced by everything from hip hop to ballet, they delivered in a stunning way.” – Jeremy Barker, The Seattlest

“The relaxed posture that informed The 605 Collective’s group choreography, and the daring athleticism of their partnering, made metakinesis inescapable. The audience found itself swaying and rocking with the formal structures and rhythmic coordination that supported the wild courage of the dancers. (…) It was refreshing to see work that so deftly celebrated the physical, not as a concept, but as a reality that puts performers and audience alike, in touch with gravity, our joints, and each other.” – Catherine Cabeen, Seattle, WA.

AUDIBLE was made possible through funding from the BC Arts Council as well as creative residencies held at Usine-C (Montréal), The Dance Centre (Vancouver), and The Firehall Arts Centre (Vancouver).

Photos by Grant Halverson