The Crack Up: Transmedia Dance Performance

The Crack Up_editorialIn 1936, Esquire Magazine published American author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay The Crack-Up – a loose-form story of a man losing his grip on reality.

Led by director and choreographer Kim Vincs and a team of designers and animators at the Deakin Motion.Lab, The Crack Up interprets Fitzgerald’s story and brings the themes to the forefront of digital technology and performance. Live dancers and virtual performers are set against a massive shifting and crumbling world of 3D-projected stereoscopic landscapes and interactive visualisation systems.

Audience members will wear 3D glasses to see the imagery come to life in stunning high resolution, as it envelops performers in an environment inspired by, but entirely foreign to, Fitzgerald’s imagination.

Elegant movement and virtual images are augmented by interactive device applications with an innovative The Crack Up App. With the swipe of a tablet, audience members can delve into the theatrical experience, with the performance taking place before their eyes and within the palms of their hands.

A panel discussion entitled Performance and Technology: where to from here? will be held at the conclusion of the matinee performance on Saturday 1 November. Kim Vincs and special guests Garry Stewart (Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre), Richard Mills (Artistic Director of Opera Victoria) and John McCormick (Deakin Motion.Lab Research Fellow) will discuss the processes involved in creating The Crack Up, and address the wider implications of integrating new forms of digital and communication technologies into theatre processes.

The Crack Up is presented by Deakin University’s Motion.Lab as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week 2014.

The Crack Up
Merlyn Theatre – The Coopers Malthouse, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank
Season: 31 October & 1 November 2014
Information and bookings: blogs.deakin.edu.au/crackup

Image: Emma Corbett and Shannon Ellis