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Artistic Director
Gideon became interested in dance towards the end of high school and after graduating deferred science at university to study at the Australian Ballet School. He later danced with the Queensland Ballet and the Sydney Dance Company before working as an independent performer and choreographer with various dance companies and independent projects within Australia and abroad. These have included commissions from the Australian Ballet Company, The Sydney Dance Company, Opera Australia and the Netherlands Dance Theatre.
Gideon founded Chunky Move in 1995 and has been its Artistic Director to date. While the company mostly features his work, it also commissions various other Australian choreographers and invites international choreographers to give workshops in its home city of Melbourne, Australia.
Obarzanek’s works for Chunky Move have been diverse in form and content including stage productions, installations, site-specific works and film. His works have been performed in many festivals and theatres around the world in the U.K, Europe, Asia and the Americas. In New York, he has been presented at BAM Next Wave Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop and the Joyce Theatre.
Most recently, Gideon’s film, Dance Like Your Old Man, co-directed with Edwina Throsby won best short documentary at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival. In collaboration with Lucy Guerin and Michael Kantor, Gideon has also received a New York Bessie award for outstanding choreography and creation for Chunky Move’s production of Tense Dave.
Earlier awards have included two Melbourne Green Room Awards for best concept and choreography for I Want to Dance Better at Parties and in 1999 a Mo award for best choreography for Bonehead. In 1997 he received the inaugural Australian Dance Award for outstanding achievement in choreography and in 1996 the Prime Minister’s Young Creative Fellowship.
Media Response
" Obarzanek's choreography,
with its brutal sometimes violent physicality, its in-yer-face
references to popular culture, its cartoony characters and
dark, satirical humour, all given full rein by virtuosic dancers,
had arrived on the scene not so much a breath of fresh air
as a gale force wind ripping through contemporary Australian
dance." THE AUSTRALIAN
" Obarzanek seems to function
in many ways as an irritant, disrupting our comfortable experiences
of dance, confounding notions of illusion and representation,
and disturbing the criteria by which dance might be judged
good or bad." THE AGE
" The perfect dance concert
for people who think modern dance is boring … Mr Obarzanek
knows what time it is, and where he’s from, it’s
tomorrow already." LESBIAN
& GAY NEW YORK
“ When artistic director Gideon Obarzanek creates a
new work he pushes the body to its limits, dancing a fine
line between fluid movement and breaking point. His dancers
strain against invisible barriers and each other, pushed and
pulled by the broken rhythms that punctuate the pressures
of modern life. It’s aggressive, high-octane, technically
brilliant stuff. It can also be disturbing and sometimes even
ugly. It’s this boldness and constant pushing of the
envelope that secured Chunky Move the position of state contemporary
dance company of Victoria in 1998, and a reputation of Australia’s
most innovative dance outfit,”
HQ MAGAZINE.
“…an idiosyncratic mind, which trawls through
cultures and fashions with irreverent delight,” THE
AGE.
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