You know what Sydney’s gallery scene has been missing? A weird endurance-style performance art piece with performers performing non-stop. Thank goodness, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Circular Quay has come through for us. Time Out Sydney’s arts and culture editor Alannah Le Cross was amongst a select group of journalists who got a sneak peek of the work before it was unveiled to the public.
Hustle Harder is a new work by the internationally acclaimed Australian-born, Berlin-based choreographer Adam Linder. Starting from Saturday, July 22, the work will be performed all day, every day for one month during the gallery’s opening hours.
Performed by a rotating cast of dancers and with contributions from other creatives, Hustle Harder repurposes a setting that traditionally focuses on visual art. Here, the choreography becomes the curation. The work highlights how the format of the exhibition converges with the physical, durational and collaborative dimensions of live performance.
The dancers largely seemed to be in agony, discomfort. Their bodies twisting and convulsing...
Hustle Harder focuses on the museum as a space where performers and public increasingly ready themselves for the camera, using art and architecture as a backdrop for their own image making. Linder’s choreography amplifies this phenomenon of incessant image reproduction into a rich and eerie movement vocabulary, which he refers to as ‘virtuosic angling’.
The work has taken over the Macgregor Gallery, the room tucked behind the reception desk on the Museum’s First Floor. It's a medium-sized room – as in, it would be large for an apartment in Sydney, but pretty modest for a domestic community hall. Each hour the performance shifts to a new stage or vibe, so you could theoretically sit there for all seven hours of the MCA’s opening hours (10am-5pm) and not see any repetitions as you’re taken on an emotional journey through several vibe shifts.
When we entered the room for the exclusive preview, the dancers were arranged around the floor in sitting positions. They oscillated and flapped their heads and limbs in sudden jerky movements. Making percussion with their bodies, and calling out words at random, echoing one another in the manner of an exhausted flock of grounded Circular Quay seagulls, waiting for the next unsuspecting person with a box of hot chips to wander past.
Staring ahead at nothing, the dancers vacantly spoke aloud the following words, amongst others: Lobotomise me. Love me. Work me. Fictionalise me. Exorcise me.
The scene felt like a personification of the idling state of my neurodivergent brain when I'm faffing about in the kitchen half-asleep – the jerky movements and randomly spoken words suddenly spoken out loud like the ticks and stims that startle my partner on the other side of the room.
The dance evolved into a series of movements oscillating wildly between popping, locking, agitated jerks and flowing grooves. Between jamming it out, the dancers would walk through the crowd, strutting with the personified purpose of a waitress trying to look busy. As the climax of the dance petered out, the scene began to look like the last dregs of punters left on a rave dancefloor, as the final hiss of their party stimulants exit their systems.
The section of sound design (by Steffen Martin) I heard was layered with mechanical hums, rolling ocean sounds, electronic bops, visceral hisses and moans, woodwinds, and the trills of rainforest creatures.
As the dance evolves, partitions are wheeled around, rearranged, and interacted with. These roving set pieces take inspiration from parts of the MCA building itself (the iconic neon pink and orange toilet doors from Level 2 even make an appearance) and literal pieces of the MCA Collection – including works by Hany Armanious, Agatha Gothe-Snape and Tracey Moffatt.
Dion Lee’s costume design is a sleek fusion of street fashion, lace cut-outs, and Covid-casual sweatpants. The monochromatic black and hypnotic blue outfits are stark against the plain white walls and polished concrete floor of the room.
The dancers largely seemed to be in agony, discomfort. Brows furrowed with concern and confusion. Their bodies twisting and convulsing. But just like a good boogie has the power to help heal your troubles after being served a heartbreak or an eviction notice, the movement has a therapeutic potential. Adam Linder would later tell me that the component I witnessed is the “emo” segment of the performance piece, and it checks out.
Tuck your phone away and sit with Hustle Harder, and you might find the work to be a conduit for quietly contemplating your own complicated tangle of feelings you keep inside. Or maybe you’ll just be weirded out. Either way, you’ll have some interesting fodder to fuel dinner table discussions.
Hustle Harder is showing at the MCA Australia, Circular Quay, from July 22 to August 20. Admission is free, and the gallery is open from 10am-5pm daily (closed Tuesdays). On Fridays, the MCA is open late ‘til 9pm. Find more details, including a comprehensive list of performers and contributors, here.