What a way to "PUSH" contemporary dance

On the evening of January 18^th, 2019, the atmosphere in the Vancouver Playhouse was electrified with a powerful energy that surged throughout the theater during Dancenorth Australia’s performance Attractor. Part of this year's Push International Performing Arts Festival, Attractor was one of many to give strong momentum to the festival as it entered its first week. It was a co-production between the company along with leading choreographers Gideon Obarzanek and Lucy Guerin. With a cast of 9 dancers and 20 participants that surprisingly emerged from the audience later on in the performance, there was a clear picture of diversity and inclusivity that was created through the music, movement vocabulary, and the overall large-scale live collaboration duet between dancers and musicians. There was an evident push and pull relationship involving manipulation that happened between the 9 dancers and the musicians throughout the first half of the performance. Indonesian out-of-this-world Javanese hypnotic duo Senyawa, challenged the dancers’ physically by utilizing their opera style and heavy metal vocals to manipulate the dancers’ bodies. Visible to the naked eye, the wave of chaotic sounds would course through their bodies and take over their kinesthetic senses making the dancers translate and the interpret the projected sounds contorting and shapeshifting their body in spellbinding ways. The combination of expressive athletic movements with loud energetic live music created an electrifying experience through demonstrating powerful yet playful superhuman abilities of the body and voice. The puppeteer and puppet relationship between the musicians and dancers that was developed and stuck at the beginning of the show, progressively disassembled as some audience members participation slowly creeped in and evolved. It was first noticed by the ear as the rhythmic noise of shakers started to fill the auditorium with surround sound. Soon after, it developed to 20 preselected audience members getting up out of their seats and joining the dancers and musicians on stage. A strong sense of community was created and a true feeling of the joy of movement was celebrated as a diverse collaborative group. As a witness of this performance, it was lovely and authentically heartening to watch.