Impermanence and Forever & Ever
Sydney Dance Company
This Saturday the Sydney Dance Company is performing at the Sydney Coliseum Theatre. Sydney Coliseum Theatre presents an extraordinary double bill featuring Rafael Bonachela’s renowned Impermanence and Antony Hamilton’s Helpmann Award-winning Forever & Ever performed by Sydney Dance Company’s “awe-inspiring” (In Daily) ensemble.
Brothers Antony and Julian Hamilton are partnering doing the music and choreography.
Julian Hamilton was born in 1976. He studied piano from a young age, and went on to pursue musical studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. There he met musical collaborator Kim Moyes. Together they went on to perform in the instrumental band Prop, and in 2003 formed the duo The Presets.
In 2008 he won the coveted APRA Song of the Year award for the Silverchair song Straight Lines, which he co-wrote with Daniel Johns. Also that year The Presets released the chart-topping album Apocalypso, selling over 250,000 copies in Australia.
The band went on to win five ARIA awards for the album, including Album of the Year in 2009, and the following year he shared the coveted APRA Songwriters of the Year award with Kim Moyes. In 2012 they were awarded Best Live Act at the In The Mix Awards, and followed that with the release of their critically acclaimed third album Pacifica.
In 2013 The Presets collaborated with Chunky Move Dance Company on Keep Everything, choreographed by Antony Hamilton (who is also Julian’s brother). Then in 2014 they toured the country with the Australian Chamber Orchestra performing their collaboration Timeline.
Julian and Antony continued their artistic relationship when they created Ruth – a commission for Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2015.
Hamilton has collaborated with other musicians both as a songwriter, composer, producer and featured artist – including Silverchair, The Sleepy Jackson, Dillon Francis, Cut Copy, Kris Menace, Gin Wigmore, Daniel Johns, Bertie Blackman, Adrian Lux and, more recently, Flight Facilities, KLP and Flume.
He lives in Sydney, Australia.
Julian is the composer for Forever & Ever,
Antony Hamilton is the Artistic Director and co-CEO of Chunky Move. He works with collaborators to experiment with materials and spaces, and uses choreography to occupy vivid imaginary worlds. Antony is preoccupied by the notion of an elemental, primordial body, situated in a construct of intersecting contemporary narratives, while being confronted by the dilemmas of an unknowable destiny.
His award-winning creations involve a collaborative melding of movement, sound and visual design. His major works include the seminal Black Project 1 (2012), critically acclaimed MEETING (2015) and NYX for the 2015 Melbourne Festival. He has created numerous national and international commissions, including Keep Everything and I Like This for Chunky Move, Black Project 3 for The Lyon Opera Ballet (FR) and Sentinel for Skanes Dansteater (SE).
Antony was the inaugural recipient of the Russell Page Fellowship in 2004, Tanja Liedtke Fellowship in 2009, a Creative Australia Fellowship in 2012 and Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2014. He was guest dance curator at The National Gallery of Victoria in 2013-14 and honorary Resident Director at Lucy Guerin Inc in 2014. He was also inaugural Resident Artist at Arts House in 2015, and inaugural International Resident Choreographer at Dancemakers Toronto (CA) in 2016.
Antony is the choreographer of Forever & Ever, which premiered at the Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay in October 2018, and features a score by his brother, Julian Hamilton of The Presets. Forever & Ever won the Helpmann Award for best choreographer in 2019. During this same year, Antony created Token Armies, his first work as Artistic Director of Chunky Move, and in 2020 he was guest mentor for Dancehouse Helsinki’s SPARKS project.
