“There are a lot of eyes on Antony Hamilton. This year the choreographer became the third artistic director of Melbourne’s flagship dance company Chunky Move, and he’s about to present his first work there as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. He hasn’t gone small, either: Token Armies features 23 human performers plus a cast of moving objects, animated sculptures and the audience itself.

If the external attention wasn’t enough, there’s also internal pressure: this is the culmination of a work he’s had in his head for years. It began with the notion of an immense object, something that could at once be a machine, an animal or a sculpture. It would be a focus point for a group of people themselves hard to define, and would serve as both a totem and a place of sanctuary. “Very much like the way smaller animals might gather around a larger animal for refuge, like small birds on the back of an elephant,” Hamilton says.”

Read the rest of the interview in The Age by clicking here

Token Armies is presented as part of the 2019 Melbourne International Arts Festival, Wed 16 – Sun 20 Oct.
Buy tickets here