LILIAN STEINER
Memoirs for Rivers and the Dictator
Memoirs for Rivers and the Dictator, 2018
Concept/choreography: Lilian Steiner
Performers: Lilian Steiner, Reuben Lewis
Music: Reuben Lewis, Marco Cher-Gibard
Each of us is the Landscape, The Dictator, The Public. Each of us is The Pacifist and The Aggressor. We are Time and Timeless - an artefact in flux. There is no linearity or central figure in this story. We are all part of this narrative.
As the human experience of time develops, the body accrues and absorbs various events, and with it, wisdom and value. Across generations the body becomes more and more of an archival document, mapping multiple histories of presence, perseverance, inevitable physical dissolve and reincarnation. Within this work, speech has a dramatic disposition, like history itself. For us as individuals and a collective, the emotion and energy of events that have passed (and those yet to pass) pervade our cells and our memories. Devastation and celebration, control and submission, flood our experience and one learns that personal power is lost and found from within.
LILIAN STEINER is a dancer and choreographer whose practice utilises the inherent intelligence of the active body as the primary tool for creating wholly encompassing visual, sonic and kinaesthetic experiences. Lilian's major choreographic projects include Admission into the Everyday Sublime (Next Wave Festival, 2016), BUNKER (Melbourne Fringe, 2015), Noise Quartet Meditation (Melbourne Fringe, 2014 & Dance Massive, 2017), Meditation (Melbourne Now, NGV, 2014) and The Call to Connect – Voyager Recordings (Lucy Guerin Inc.'s Pieces for Small Spaces, 2012). Noise Quartet Meditation received the 2015 Green Room Award for 'Concept and Realisation'. As a dancer, Lilian has worked with companies Lucy Guerin Inc. and Phillip Adams' Balletlab across many projects as well as with independent choreographers Melanie Lane, Shelley Lasica, Brooke Stamp, visual artists Brook Andrew, Ash Keating, Mikala Dwyer, Alicia Frankovic and architect Matthew Bird. In 2017 Lilian received both the Helpmann Award and Green Room Award for Best Female Dancer.
A 50 minute version of this work was premiered in DANCE MASSIVE 2019 at The Substation. READ MORE
Dancehouse, Melbourne - March 2018 - all rights reserved
Documentation by Cobie Orger.