For U>N>I>T>E>D, Chunky Move artistic director Antony Hamilton has collaborated with Indonesian electro-noise duo Gabber Modus Operandi, Balinese street-fashion recyclers Future Loundry, together with animatronic puppetry experts Creature Technology, who have designed the exoskeletons and prostheses.

The production is a piece of dance mime which, by merit of its shuddering metallic-industrial musical backing and its tendency to blockily click bodies from one aggressive pose to another, is nothing if not intense and enjoyable.

It is also, if viewed with a sceptical eye, more than a bit silly. Where the hit musical Cats basically consists of little more than actors in impressive cat costumes singing and dancing, U>N>I>T>E>D is essentially a cyberpunk version of the same. It may not be insightful, but as spectacle and noise it is thunderously ecstatic.

Chunky Move: U>N>I>T>E>D. Photo © Gianna Rizzo

U>N>I>T>E>D closely recalls Australian Dance Theatre’s stunning and arguably more thoughtful display of robotised forms alongside vulnerable human bodies, Devolution (2006). Where Devolution’s heavy, spiky forms swung about dangerously under their own motive power and control,...