What happens when you put 12 dancers, a Dutch couture fashion house, a kinetic sculptor fascinated by “synthetic nature,” and two choreographers who thrive on risk in the same room? You get 'Bad Nature' – a world premiere that’s part installation, part live music, part dance, and a little bit fever dream.
Debuting at Brisbane Festival for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run, the show pushes at the edges of what performance can be. Australasian Dance Collective (ADC) teams up with the Netherlands’ Club Guy & Roni for a work that refuses to sit neatly in one category. “It’s jaw-dropping,” Artistic Director Amy Hollingsworth says. Associate Artistic Director Jack Lister adds, “It’s equally a live music gig, an installation, a cinematic experience, and a dance show. That’s its strength.”
The collaboration traces back to the middle of the pandemic. Hollingsworth recalls first meeting Club Guy & Roni’s Guy Weizman during a 24-hour global arts marathon on Zoom. “I didn’t meet Roni straight away, but I met Guy online during the pandemic,” she says. The idea lingered, and when the timing was right, Brisbane became the stage for its world premiere.
From the outset, the team wrestled with what 'bad nature' even means. “We battled with the concept for a long time,” Lister admits. “Is it about the environment? Our insidious relationship with technology? Or is it about the things we call ‘bad’ – or are they just. . . Nature?”
That ambiguity runs through the work. The dancers don’t mimic oceans or forests, but they move inside Boris Acket’s vast landscapes of light and sound: storm cells, glowing sunsets, waves without water. “It’s this faking of nature,” Lister says. “Humans recognise it instantly – but it’s all technology. That became a really interesting counterpoint.”
Hollingsworth finds Acket’s world both dazzling and unsettling. “We glorify nature, but we’re not doing enough to preserve it. His work captures that contradiction. It’s beautiful and painful at the same time.”
Love and destruction sit at the heart of the choreography.
“Instead of seeing them as opposites, we looked at them as a circle,” Lister says. “How much can you love something before it smothers? How much control tips into destruction?”
On stage, the 12 dancers – six from ADC, six from Club Guy & Roni – bring those tensions alive alongside three musicians. “It’s a love fest,” Lister laughs. “They’re all from wildly different backgrounds, and that makes the dialogue between them really exciting.”
Hollingsworth agrees: “The room was full of formidable artists. None of them were shy with their opinions, and that robust exchange is part of what audiences will see. You’re not just watching a company move as one, you’re watching 15 individuals on stage.”
The heaviness is broken with moments of humour and tenderness, including a scene where a human falls in love with a robot. “We started with the idea that technology was cold and isolating,” Hollingsworth says. “But then we flipped it. Screens can be hopeful. A long-distance relationship can thrive because of them. It was about recognising the comfort we find in digital spaces, not just the disconnection.”
Despite its scale, 'Bad Nature' lands on something intimate. “I’d like audiences to leave with questions,” Lister says. “Not answers. Just curiosity about their relationships – with each other, the world, themselves.” Hollingsworth adds: “I hope it prompts people to move more lightly through the world, with greater care and connection. Technology without humanity at its core is terrifying to me.”
With costumes by Maison the Faux, live percussion by HIIIT, and Acket’s shifting environments, 'Bad Nature' is less a performance than a world you step into. And it doesn’t stick around for long.
“It’s jaw-dropping,” Hollingsworth says. “You have to see it to believe it.”
'Bad Nature' plays Brisbane Powerhouse 3-7 September as part of Brisbane Festival.
