Review: ORBIT Week Two – [gameboy] & Future History

★★★★☆

The first thing that moves in Future History is a feather duster. Gabrielle Nankivell stands almost still, draped in red and green fabric, her head elongated by cardboard.

In her left hand, green feathers flutter in the breeze. Birds chirp. She lowers her hand so slowly that you notice the distance it has travelled before you notice it moving. She could be an amoeba. How many years would it take for an amoeba to do anything we’d recognise as a step?

Then a voice cuts in: three minutes, two minutes, thirty seconds. Nankivell eventually shuffles sideways. Evolution, perhaps. We’ve barely got going and already we’re being told to wrap it up.

Future History opens the second week of ORBIT at The Odeon in Norwood. Australian Dance Theatre, Sydney Dance Company and Dancehouse set up the touring program to give independent choreographers the resources to take their work to more audiences.

The major companies benefit from a healthy independent scene, too. Where else do artists get to find out whether a feather duster can hold a room?

By the time we get to humanity, the stage looks like a museum. A Tasmanian tiger stands on a white plinth, its shadow thrown onto the screen behind it. There’s a bouquet and a cloud in a clear box, lit violet. We’ve got flowers indoors and, apparently, the weather too.

Nankivell moves with bursts of freedom, then the eye goes back to the boxes. Even the space suit puts a shell around a body. Luke Smiles’ soundtrack crowds in with the noise of streets, trains and traffic. The voice keeps counting down.

In the last stretch, the fabric seems to spit Nankivell out. She sorts through it on the floor and lays it out in a circle. An orange glow washes over her, and a chorus swells. For a moment, her reach suggests an ascent.

Then you see her jaw clench. She took the better part of forever to lower one hand. Now it’s hard to watch her body fight for what little time it has left. We are all the Tasmanian tiger.

Thirty minutes later, a child’s voice compares the internet to eating plastic. It makes them very smart and very dumb. Fair enough.

After Nankivell’s reckoning with extinction, Amy Zhang’s [gameboy] offers the relief of watching a man try to transport a green apple without using his hands. He gets it wedged inside his motorcycle helmet.

William ‘Billy’ Keohavong and Ko Yamada start in black underwear, each under his own spotlight. Their shadows meet on the wall before their bodies do. The selves we send out online can take up more room than we do.

Then Zhang sends the pair through a series of challenges with the logic of a Japanese game show and the rhythm of a TikTok scroll.

They run through rows of lollies, race in plastic sacks and, for the loser, there’s the indignity of having to brush his teeth before chugging a soft drink. It’s very funny. It also goes on just long enough for the thumb to start itching for a swipe.

The dancing gets stranger once the games are over. One performer’s torso hides the other’s, but there are still four legs. The two chitter and move like a single creature.

 Zhang gets an effect here that a filter could give you in a second, except you can see the control it takes to keep the illusion going. Then the stage goes pink, and the pair throw themselves into a gloriously camp hyperpop finale.

The world might be ending, but we’ve still got time for one more dance.

Amy Zhang’s [gameboy] and Future History by Gabrielle Nankivell appear at ORBIT (Week Two) at The Odeon Theatre until 14 November 2026. 57a Queen Street Norwood SA 5067.

Tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/adt-orbit-week-2-gameboy-and-future-history

Website: https://www.adt.org.au/for-artists/orbit

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/ausdancetheatre/

Images supplied.