Garry Stewart has built a reputation for pushing dance beyond convention into new realms. In Devolution Garry Stewart collaborated with Canadian multi-disciplinary artist Louis-Philippe Demers, UK video artist Gina Czarnecki and London based costume designer Georg Meyer-Wiel to create an unique world. Situating humans in communion with multiple robotic machines of both large and medium scale, a large scale robotic, kinetic set and lighting design, a multitude of robotic prostheses and ambulating robotic constructs as well as extraordinary video art, Devolution explored the relationship between machine and body.
Filled with symbolism and ritualised process Devolution highlighted that for all of our technology we are still primitive, of the flesh and live as instinctive biological beings.
Devolution won the Helpmann Awards Best New Australian Work and Best Lighting in 2006.
Devolution was assisted by the Arts SA Major Commission Program and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, through the New Australian Stories Initiative and its Major Festivals Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Incorporated, the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts and Sydney Festival.