Code of Conduct is pungently sited on the 20^th floor of a Brisbane office block. Look out the windows and a shiny city full of possibilities beckons; inside it’s all concrete, low ceilings and regrettably basic equipment. 

If not for the smart suits worn by the Code of Conduct dancers you could easily imagine this as a prison rec room. It’s that bleak.

The strait-jacket of work is the organising principle of Australasian Dance Collective’s bracing new site-specific work. I work therefore I am. I have some authority so I take pleasure in exerting power over someone more junior. If, when moving up the greasy pole to success, I have to push others out of the way, so be it. If I put up with just about anything to retain this job, well, whatever it takes.

All this is succinctly expressed in Code of Conduct’s churning, twisting, crawling, desperate movement, punctuated by smarmy office-speak.

ADC’s Jack Lister and Amy Hollingsworth conceived Code of Conduct and choreographed in collaboration with the work’s six dancers, Sam Hall, Lilly King, Taiga Kita-Leong, Lily Potger, Hugo Poulet and Te Atawhai Kaa.

They put the boot in hard.  

Not meeting your KPIs? You’ll have to try harder. Not feeling well? There’s a sceptical voice at the other end of the phone. Been sick for a while? The unhappy news is that your leave entitlement is “exhausted”.

That word has another meaning of course. It’s a fulltime job trying to keep up. It is truly exhausting. 

Those recognisable corporate stresses (lots of recognition laughter from the audience on opening night) provide the surface tension of Code of Conduct but there are deeper and dare I say darker currents flowing underneath. 

The costuming and office hardware takes Code of Conduct out of the present and into something that summons the 1980s. The dancers look androgynous and anonymous (think Robert Palmer and his music videos) and repeated dog imagery raises shivery thoughts. Top dog. Dog eat dog. Work like a dog. Treated like a dog. At one point a man is commanded as one would a dog and led on a leash.

Institutional tables with fluoro underlighting suggest rather more than corporate cost-cutting and I thought of Orwell’s 1984, the repression of individuality, the pressure to conform, and much else in history besides.

There is, however, a gorgeous ray of beauty in the work that offers hope. Louis Frere-Harvey’s terrific industrial score and soundscape is interspersed with celestial music by Glass, Liszt and Sibelius, played live by Alex Raineri. The decision to include the pieces was inspired. Light was introduced where mostly there was shade. 

Code of Conduct continues on March 26, 27 and 28, with two performances on both the 27^th and 28^th. Level 20, 300 George St, Brisbane.