★★★★ “It’s an inventive and adventurous ride.” – TimeOut
Overview
Forever & Ever premiered in 2018, laying “siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe” (The Australian). Set to a sonically stimulating score by The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever fuses together a killer mix of dance, techno, high fashion and vivid lighting to hypnotic effect.
Forever & Ever returned to the stage in 2023 as part of the triple bill Ascent at Sydney Opera House, before touring nationally. It had its international premiere at Theatre Bonn, Germany in October 2023 and returns to Europe in 2024.
Exploring ideas of order, chaos, popular culture and human behaviour, this boundary-pushing work is a bold and thrilling theatrical experience that is not to be missed.
Preview
Creatives
Choreographer: Antony Hamilton
Composer: Julian Hamilton
Costume Design: Paula Levis
Lighting Design: Ben Cisterne
Performance History
2024 Performances
Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona, Spain (Ascent triple bill)
14 – 16 March
Royal Opera House, London, UK (Ascent triple bill)
25 – 28 March
2023 Performances
Sydney Season
Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre (as part of Ascent triple bill)
15 – 26 March
National Tour
Canberra, ACT
9 – 11 March
Wyong, NSW
6 May
Adelaide, SA
11 – 13 May
Bendigo, VIC
31 May
Warrnambool, VIC
3 June
Darwin, NT
19 July
Alice Spring, NT
22 July
Hobart, TAS
27 – 29 July
Launceston, TAS
2 August
Newcastle, NSW
9 August
Port Macquarie, NSW
12 August
Sydney Coliseum Theatre West HQ, Rooty Hill, NSW
26 August
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse, VIC
29 August – 2 September
International Tour
Theatre Bonn, Germany (Impermanence and Forever & Ever double bill)
17 – 18 October
Amare, The Hague, The Netherlands (Impermanence and Forever & Ever double bill)
20 – 21 October
2018 Performances
Premiere – Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney
16 – 27 Oct
Media & Audience Reviews
2023
★★★★ “Hamilton’s background in commercial dance is a strength for this vision, with the choreography intensifying to a pounding, in-your-face rhythmic complexity before the rave-inspired laser-light finale.” – Sydney Morning Herald
“aggressive, startling and completely mesmerising” (Forever & Ever) – Australian Arts Review
★★★★ “Hamilton’s super-precise, high-definition choreography captures the cool of pop-culture along with its blank-faced conformity.” – Limelight
“The hip hop, body popping, high energy sequenced movements of the dancers, create a fast-paced techno piece that brought the house down.” – The Wonderful World of Dance
“Forever & Ever is sublime… This is a truly captivating piece.” – Dance Life
★★★★ “…the visually arresting aesthetic – a stark white set like a photoshoot, bold block-coloured costumes, strobes, and that unforgiving loop soundtrack – makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into a music video.” – Sydney Morning Herald
“… (Forever & Ever) celebrates both the creativity and eccentricity of contemporary dance that has much to offer both old and new audiences” – Dance Life
“… transforms into a pulsating, post-apocalyptic, artificial intelligent night club, filled with robotic dancers dressed in eye-catching chromatic layered costumes that seemed to have come from a dark corner of a multi-verse.” – The Wonderful World of Dance
2018
“Forever & Ever lays siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe. It’s immediate, visceral stuff, as Wednesday’s opening night reception proved. The roars of approval went on and on.” – The Australian
“★★★★★ mind-warping…The collision of beats, movement, fashion and even f**king lasers feels like a rave at an avant garde London Fashion Week show with models swapped out for vogueing cyborgs.” – Pedestrian TV
“★★★★ A premiere of something completely different” – Sydney Morning Herald
“★★★★ It’s an inventive and adventurous ride…original and evocative.” – TimeOut
“★★★★ A thrilling theatrical experience.” – Daily Review
“This program was remarkable for showing us the breadth of what contemporary dance can accomplish… stunningly danced.” – Michelle Potter
“Curious, engaging, forceful.” – Sydney Arts Guide
“…wonderfully impactful… a mesmerising vision…” – The Plus Ones
“★★★★ 1/2″ – The Age
“Mind officially blown. If you get a chance go and see Forever & Ever a new work by @sydneydanceco with incredible score by Julian Hamilton from @ThePresets. F**king amazing and it’s only on for a bit. Do it!!!! So worth it. I can’t stop thinking about it.” – Paul Mac (Musician)
“Antony Hamilton’s Forever & Ever was like a Moebius comic crossed with Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” video with a slamming techno score by Julian Hamilton, creating a whole world to get lost in.” – Ben Marshall (Head of Contemporary Music at Sydney Opera House)
“Forever & Ever was a brutal, pagan, mechanistic death rave and I LOVED IT; the collective heartbeat of the theatre roared with dread and pleasure. Terrifying choreo from @antonyhamilton ; terrifying score by @jlnhmltn ; killer campaign by @zmorellini” – @nine_things (Audience Member)
“Extraordinary night…Music, costumes, choreography, dancers… and them lasers! Wow!” – Jacqui Bonner (Audience Member)
“Absolutely amazing. The dancers are phenomenal.” – Sheree Zellner (Audience Member)
“Magic makers creating new worlds.” – Stereogamous
“Poetry in motion” – Audience Member
Behind the Scenes
"I have been obsessed with unison for my whole career. Not just unison as a thing but unison as an idea. What do we mean by unison? What could be a version of unison that we don’t normally call unison?" - Antony Hamilton
"Because I work in a pop music world most of the time where you only have three and a half minutes to try and say something, this is a much different process. You have half an hour to say much less and you don’t really want to compete with the dancing on the stage. So that’s a really fun practice to be able to craft some music that doesn’t do much. I really enjoyed it." - Julian Hamilton
"As the work is called Forever & Ever, I tried to find motifs that represented the theme of infinity... The audience will see something very bold, very graphic. Initially something very structural with a lot of shapes and a lot of lines." - Paula Levis
Cheat Sheet
Forever & Ever is a Helpmann Award-winning work by choreographer Antony Hamilton.
The work engages with ideas of duplication, unison and modification in movement, drawing direct inspiration from a minimal electronic score composed by his brother, The Presets’ Julian Hamilton.
READ: Antony Hamilton chats to us about how he created Forever & Ever.
“I don’t delineate between styles and disciplines when I’m making choreography. It’s all just raw material at my disposal, and it is created quite haphazardly with movement qualities being utilised in a fairly spontaneous way… I don’t over think it.”
Antony Hamilton is the Artistic Director of Chunky Move based in Melbourne. 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 and Sentinel for Skånes Dansteater.
WATCH: Antony create Forever & Ever in the studio
Fun Fact: Besides contemporary dance, Antony’s dance background includes classical ballet, breakdancing and hip hop. His mother sent him to dance classes as an eight-year-old because he was an ‘active’ child with no interest in sport and of a creative persuasion.”
Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever
“Composing these longer form works is a refreshing change from the pop music world I normally inhabit. Instead of trying to say everything in the space of a three minute song I am instead able to explore just how much emotion and meaning I can convey by saying very little at all.”
Julian Hamilton is an Australian composer and member of the ARIA Award winning band The Presets. In 2008, the Presets released the chart topping Apocalypso, selling over 250 000 copies in Australia and winning five ARIA Awards.
Julian’s original score for Forever & Ever is informed by a minimal pop attitude, sonically referencing electronic toys and rave culture. The majority of the soundtrack was created with only two instruments: a Roland TR-909 and a Moog synthesiser, and calls to a sonic language reminiscent of a party or rave.
READ: Julian on bridging the world between pop music and dance.
LISTEN: Julian shares his musical inspirations behind Forever & Ever.
Fun Fact: Julian is Antony Hamilton’s brother and they have been creating together for years, ever since they were kids making stop-motion movies with GI Joe figures in the backyard. You’ll even find home videos of them playing synthesisers and dancing together as six-year-olds!
Forever & Ever features bold, graphic and structural costumes, which include motifs indicative of the title of the piece (e.g. infinity signs, continuing lines, circles and swirls). Throughout the performance, the costumes are worn, stripped off, and duplicated across different formations of dancers. As they gyrate and spin to Julian Hamilton’s techno soundtrack, the dancers start to resemble part electronic toy, part Blade Runner replicant.
Fun Fact: Some Company dancers wear six layers of clothes at one point during Forever & Ever.
Information
Overview
Forever & Ever premiered in 2018, laying “siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe” (The Australian). Set to a sonically stimulating score by The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever fuses together a killer mix of dance, techno, high fashion and vivid lighting to hypnotic effect.
Forever & Ever returned to the stage in 2023 as part of the triple bill Ascent at Sydney Opera House, before touring nationally. It had its international premiere at Theatre Bonn, Germany in October 2023 and returns to Europe in 2024.
Exploring ideas of order, chaos, popular culture and human behaviour, this boundary-pushing work is a bold and thrilling theatrical experience that is not to be missed.
Preview
Creatives
Choreographer: Antony Hamilton
Composer: Julian Hamilton
Costume Design: Paula Levis
Lighting Design: Ben Cisterne
Performance History
2024 Performances
Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona, Spain (Ascent triple bill)
14 – 16 March
Royal Opera House, London, UK (Ascent triple bill)
25 – 28 March
2023 Performances
Sydney Season
Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre (as part of Ascent triple bill)
15 – 26 March
National Tour
Canberra, ACT
9 – 11 March
Wyong, NSW
6 May
Adelaide, SA
11 – 13 May
Bendigo, VIC
31 May
Warrnambool, VIC
3 June
Darwin, NT
19 July
Alice Spring, NT
22 July
Hobart, TAS
27 – 29 July
Launceston, TAS
2 August
Newcastle, NSW
9 August
Port Macquarie, NSW
12 August
Sydney Coliseum Theatre West HQ, Rooty Hill, NSW
26 August
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse, VIC
29 August – 2 September
International Tour
Theatre Bonn, Germany (Impermanence and Forever & Ever double bill)
17 – 18 October
Amare, The Hague, The Netherlands (Impermanence and Forever & Ever double bill)
20 – 21 October
2018 Performances
Premiere – Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney
16 – 27 Oct
Media & Audience Reviews
2023
★★★★ “Hamilton’s background in commercial dance is a strength for this vision, with the choreography intensifying to a pounding, in-your-face rhythmic complexity before the rave-inspired laser-light finale.” – Sydney Morning Herald
“aggressive, startling and completely mesmerising” (Forever & Ever) – Australian Arts Review
★★★★ “Hamilton’s super-precise, high-definition choreography captures the cool of pop-culture along with its blank-faced conformity.” – Limelight
“The hip hop, body popping, high energy sequenced movements of the dancers, create a fast-paced techno piece that brought the house down.” – The Wonderful World of Dance
“Forever & Ever is sublime… This is a truly captivating piece.” – Dance Life
★★★★ “…the visually arresting aesthetic – a stark white set like a photoshoot, bold block-coloured costumes, strobes, and that unforgiving loop soundtrack – makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into a music video.” – Sydney Morning Herald
“… (Forever & Ever) celebrates both the creativity and eccentricity of contemporary dance that has much to offer both old and new audiences” – Dance Life
“… transforms into a pulsating, post-apocalyptic, artificial intelligent night club, filled with robotic dancers dressed in eye-catching chromatic layered costumes that seemed to have come from a dark corner of a multi-verse.” – The Wonderful World of Dance
2018
“Forever & Ever lays siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe. It’s immediate, visceral stuff, as Wednesday’s opening night reception proved. The roars of approval went on and on.” – The Australian
“★★★★★ mind-warping…The collision of beats, movement, fashion and even f**king lasers feels like a rave at an avant garde London Fashion Week show with models swapped out for vogueing cyborgs.” – Pedestrian TV
“★★★★ A premiere of something completely different” – Sydney Morning Herald
“★★★★ It’s an inventive and adventurous ride…original and evocative.” – TimeOut
“★★★★ A thrilling theatrical experience.” – Daily Review
“This program was remarkable for showing us the breadth of what contemporary dance can accomplish… stunningly danced.” – Michelle Potter
“Curious, engaging, forceful.” – Sydney Arts Guide
“…wonderfully impactful… a mesmerising vision…” – The Plus Ones
“★★★★ 1/2″ – The Age
“Mind officially blown. If you get a chance go and see Forever & Ever a new work by @sydneydanceco with incredible score by Julian Hamilton from @ThePresets. F**king amazing and it’s only on for a bit. Do it!!!! So worth it. I can’t stop thinking about it.” – Paul Mac (Musician)
“Antony Hamilton’s Forever & Ever was like a Moebius comic crossed with Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” video with a slamming techno score by Julian Hamilton, creating a whole world to get lost in.” – Ben Marshall (Head of Contemporary Music at Sydney Opera House)
“Forever & Ever was a brutal, pagan, mechanistic death rave and I LOVED IT; the collective heartbeat of the theatre roared with dread and pleasure. Terrifying choreo from @antonyhamilton ; terrifying score by @jlnhmltn ; killer campaign by @zmorellini” – @nine_things (Audience Member)
“Extraordinary night…Music, costumes, choreography, dancers… and them lasers! Wow!” – Jacqui Bonner (Audience Member)
“Absolutely amazing. The dancers are phenomenal.” – Sheree Zellner (Audience Member)
“Magic makers creating new worlds.” – Stereogamous
“Poetry in motion” – Audience Member
Behind the Scenes
"I have been obsessed with unison for my whole career. Not just unison as a thing but unison as an idea. What do we mean by unison? What could be a version of unison that we don’t normally call unison?" - Antony Hamilton
"Because I work in a pop music world most of the time where you only have three and a half minutes to try and say something, this is a much different process. You have half an hour to say much less and you don’t really want to compete with the dancing on the stage. So that’s a really fun practice to be able to craft some music that doesn’t do much. I really enjoyed it." - Julian Hamilton
"As the work is called Forever & Ever, I tried to find motifs that represented the theme of infinity... The audience will see something very bold, very graphic. Initially something very structural with a lot of shapes and a lot of lines." - Paula Levis
Cheat Sheet
Forever & Ever is a Helpmann Award-winning work by choreographer Antony Hamilton.
The work engages with ideas of duplication, unison and modification in movement, drawing direct inspiration from a minimal electronic score composed by his brother, The Presets’ Julian Hamilton.
READ: Antony Hamilton chats to us about how he created Forever & Ever.
“I don’t delineate between styles and disciplines when I’m making choreography. It’s all just raw material at my disposal, and it is created quite haphazardly with movement qualities being utilised in a fairly spontaneous way… I don’t over think it.”
Antony Hamilton is the Artistic Director of Chunky Move based in Melbourne. 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 and Sentinel for Skånes Dansteater.
WATCH: Antony create Forever & Ever in the studio
Fun Fact: Besides contemporary dance, Antony’s dance background includes classical ballet, breakdancing and hip hop. His mother sent him to dance classes as an eight-year-old because he was an ‘active’ child with no interest in sport and of a creative persuasion.”
Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever
“Composing these longer form works is a refreshing change from the pop music world I normally inhabit. Instead of trying to say everything in the space of a three minute song I am instead able to explore just how much emotion and meaning I can convey by saying very little at all.”
Julian Hamilton is an Australian composer and member of the ARIA Award winning band The Presets. In 2008, the Presets released the chart topping Apocalypso, selling over 250 000 copies in Australia and winning five ARIA Awards.
Julian’s original score for Forever & Ever is informed by a minimal pop attitude, sonically referencing electronic toys and rave culture. The majority of the soundtrack was created with only two instruments: a Roland TR-909 and a Moog synthesiser, and calls to a sonic language reminiscent of a party or rave.
READ: Julian on bridging the world between pop music and dance.
LISTEN: Julian shares his musical inspirations behind Forever & Ever.
Fun Fact: Julian is Antony Hamilton’s brother and they have been creating together for years, ever since they were kids making stop-motion movies with GI Joe figures in the backyard. You’ll even find home videos of them playing synthesisers and dancing together as six-year-olds!
Forever & Ever features bold, graphic and structural costumes, which include motifs indicative of the title of the piece (e.g. infinity signs, continuing lines, circles and swirls). Throughout the performance, the costumes are worn, stripped off, and duplicated across different formations of dancers. As they gyrate and spin to Julian Hamilton’s techno soundtrack, the dancers start to resemble part electronic toy, part Blade Runner replicant.
Fun Fact: Some Company dancers wear six layers of clothes at one point during Forever & Ever.
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