- Hello, my name's Lucy Guerin
and I'm the choreographer of the work
'Metal' that you're about to see.
It's a collaboration between Melbourne
based dance company Lucy Guerin Inc
and a heavy metal choir
called Ensemble Tikoro
that's based in Bandung in Indonesia.
But before we show you the full work,
we'd like to present a short trailer
that was made towards the beginning
of the development of the work,
when we travelled to Bandung
to first meet Ensemble Tikoro
and to experiment and chat about
what we might do together.
So, I went with two dancers,
Lilian Steiner and Melanie Lane.
We went to Bandung,
which is a town in West Java,
and I met Robi Rusdiana,
who's the leader
of this amazing heavy metal choir
called Ensemble Tikoro.
And we spent five days together
and they vocalised and we moved.
And we also meshed those two things,
so that the dancers sang
and the singers moved.
And we basically just experimented with
a whole lot of different tasks,
ideas, thoughts about our practices
and how they could work together.
- (THROAT SINGING)
- Ensemble Tikoro,
they're a group of heavy metal singers.
They were brought together
by Robi Rusdiana, who's their leader,
and they work with extended
heavy metal vocal techniques.
- (THROAT SINGING)
- Robi formed this extreme
vocal ensemble
while he was at university
doing his masters.
And after he finished that,
the group stayed together
and they still continued to perform.
A lot of the guys work in this cafe
that sells honey in Bandung.
And it means that
they don't have to cut their hair
or have a very rigid lifestyle
in an office.
It means that
they've got quite a lot of freedom,
they can look however they want,
they can wear their metal gear.
And it's a very special honey
and it comes from a secret village
which is quite isolated
outside of Bandung.
- (ROBI SINGS)
- Robi develops his works
through improvisation
and then he scores them
and then conducts them for the choir.
Robi's background is in classical music.
He's studied Baroque music
and also counterpoint
was one of his areas of study,
which made me laugh when I heard it
because it just seems like the complete
antithesis to heavy metal music.
I guess this is interesting to me
because I feel that our collaboration
is in some ways an artistic
and cultural counterpoint.
There's this intense, crazy,
wild, primal energy of the men,
erm, and the more refined, precise,
disciplined approach of the dancers,
and that these two things
coming together
really can add up to
quite an extraordinary whole.
- (THROAT SINGING)
- I think it'll have a very sort of
formal framing and structure,
something that's a container,
and that within that,
the actual material
could get quite chaotic and quite wild.
The material within that
will press up against this container.
- (THROAT SINGING)
- I think that Ensemble Tikoro
is a group of many paradoxes, in a way.
I have to say that us working together
also feels like a bit of a paradox.
I'm not originally a heavy metal fan,
but I have always been drawn to
the kind of intense energy of that music
and been a little bit afraid of it also,
I think.
I think, ultimately,
it's a collaboration
between artists who are interested in
what each other do
and really just exploring
how we might work together
and create something out of that meeting
for an audience.
OK, so here's Metal.
It's a co-creation between myself,
Lucy Guerin,
and composer Robi Rusdiana.
It premiered at the Playhouse
at Arts Centre Melbourne
as part of Asia TOPA.
Hope you enjoy the show.
