Antony Hamilton, the freshly appointed Artistic Director of Chunky Move, has opened a radical new chapter for the company with his genre-defying work Token Armies. He leads the charge literally on horseback, unveiling a quasi-installation piece featuring 23 dancers, robots and an assortment of animals. It’s a bold offering, defined by intelligent choreographic systems and a strong visual language.

Chunky Move’s Token Armies. Photo © Dian McLeod

As the audience slowly filters into the cavernous hall of Melbourne’s Meat Market, the space is already alive. The performers, clad in antifa-inspired uniforms complete with face masks and caps (costumes by Paula Levis), move through the grey haze in a continuous anticlockwise direction. Some run with black flags, others march with a dog or an eagle, some glide along on wheeled frames.

Joining them on the giddying loop is a massive cubic, brain-like sculpture (designed by Creature Technology Co), which floats ominously above the activity, occasionally jolting like a slumbering beast disturbed. Smaller animatronic puppets traverse the space as offspring, walking clunkily between the fauna.

The program note proposes a “bring[ing] together of varied lifeforms in a collective action”. The purpose of the collective action is never...