Alone in the madding crowd

"Gideon Obarzanek's piece for Chunky Move, hailed for its tender beauty, is as much about sound as movement, writes Philippa Hawker.

'I thought at first,'' says choreographer Gideon Obarzanek, ''that this piece was very much about crowds.'' Perfectly understandable - Assembly has more than 60 people on stage. ''But the more I've been working on it, I've found it's often about being alone.'' Not about being lonely, he hastens to add, ''but about being alone in a large number of people''.

Assembly is his final piece as artistic director of Chunky Move, the contemporary dance company he founded in Melbourne in 1995. It is a work about sound as much as it is about movement - its cast is made up of eight dancers, six principal singers and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs." Click here to read more.