WHAT IS IN BETWEEN?
Dancehouse Public Program 2020
CURATED BY ANGELA CONQUET
with PHILIPA ROTHFIELD & ASHLEY DYER
Dancehouse’s Keir Choreographic Award (KCA) Public Program accompanies the KCA competition and is an integral part of this initiative and of Dancehouse’s ongoing commitment to promote dialogue, reflection, accessibility and criticality for the art form, its makers and its audiences. It aims to cross-pollinate an array of outstanding thinkers and practitioners from the dance field and other communities of thought in order to provide a unique context in which to consider the deep, subtle ways that dance, with its multiplicity of choreographed and embodied manifestations, connects to the social, the ethical, the political and as importantly, to our most inner selves.
PERFORMANCE
Credit Amelia Ducker
PROJECT F - PRUE LANG
PROJECT F is a kinaesthetic engagement with feminism, felt via a particular focus on female figures from 12th century until now. It uses the parallel stories and music from historic and modern day trailblazing women – Hildegard von Bingen (b. 1102) and Princess Nokia (b. 1992) – as provocations to explore notions of feminist utopia, in choreographic terms.
Concept and Direction: Prue Lang
Choreography: Prue Lang in collaboration with the dancers
Performers: Jana Castillo, Amber McCartney, Lauren Langlois, Niharika Senapati
Prue Lang was a 2018 KCA commissioned artist. This is the full-length version of the initial work.
Penelope Sleeps -Mette Edvardsen & Matteo Fargion
Penelope Sleeps is an indirect reference to the figure of Penelope, the wife of Odys- seus, who waited for her husband for years while he travelled the world and waged war, and who, in the meantime, also kept a large number of suitors at bay. Like the tale of the small spider that Edvardsen recounts, Penelope was a weaver (etymologi- cally, the Greek word pēnē refers to ‘weft’). However, every night she would unravel the result of her work in order to start over again. The performance mimics working- without-an-outcome: Penelope Sleeps is about the notion of operating, of writing or performing — like the weaving of a text that is constantly beginning to fray.
Mette Edvardsen was a 2020 KCA Jury Member.
Text: Mette Edvardsen
Music: Matteo Fargion
Performers: Mette Edvardsen, Matteo Fargion and Angela Hicks
WORKSHOPS
Matteo Fargion - 1 Note 2 Movements 3 Words
This 2 day composition workshop focussed on what happens when ideas and techniques that come from music are translated into movement, and vice versa. Drawing from 30 years of experience of working as a composer and performer in the dance and theatre world, Matteo Fargion proposed exercises that used an extreme reduction of possibilities to stimulate the imagination. Questions about how to find material, how to keep something going, what makes a strong or a weak change and other compositional ‘problems’ were discussed. Participants also explored ways in which music and movement can co-exist on stage without falling into too familiar relationships. This workshop was for anyone interested in making performance work, and musicians were welcome, but not obliged, to bring in their instruments.
Mette Edvardsen -Choreography As Writing
Many of Mette Edvardsen’s recent works have been developed using language as material, looking into the relationship between writing and speaking, between language and voice. Mette Edvardsen is working on the verge of the visible, considering choreography as writing. This workshop for professional choreographers explored some of her methodologies and scores.
Presented in partnership with Lucy Guerin Inc as part of the Dancehouse Keir Cho- reographic Award public program.
Claudia La Rocco - Mortal Materials
For writers and artists with a developed writing practice. We talk about the things we do and make being ephemeral. As if we lasted. As if we had anything more than a little time and a little space ourselves in which to wrap around and through and under all of it. This was a writing/making/thinking/talking lab for artists interested in spending fifteen hours’ worth of their non-renewable resources so as to explore collectively shaped questions and speculations. The Keir Choreographic Award was one of myriad starting points.
INSTALLATIONS
Mette Edvardsen - Table of Contents & Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine book launch
A collection of texts, books, notes and other ephemera placed on a table for further reading. Many of Mette Edvardsen’s recent works have been developed using language as material, looking into the relationship between writing and speak- ing, between language and voice. Mette Edvardsen is working on the verge of the visible, considering choreography as writing. Publishing — in the form of traces, texts, drawings, books — has developed into an important part of her artistic practice.
Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine A launch for the project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine, which started as a group of people who dedicated themselves to memorising a book of their choice. Together they formed a library collection consisting of living books. The publication brings together eighteen text contributions from artists and theoreticians with a varying degree of proximity to the project.
Claudia La Rocco - The Retrospective Room
A reading, writing, moving, drawing, sitting room that encouraged a porousness between the inward-looking world of the solitary maker and the social world of improvisation and chance encounters. A room stocked with good wine and invited guests, natural light, comfortable seats, previous works and present influences. A room in which stillness and quiet are always suitable answers. A work that reveals itself in the doing and being, that builds itself out of time spent and ideas exchanged. Local and international artists — poets, musicians, writers, choreographers — will enter in resonance with Claudia’s scores and materials. Come and go as you please. Wait for things to unfold
With: Amaara Raheem, Leisa Shelton, Brian Rogers, Dylan van der Schyff and others.
Image Gregory Lorenzutti
CONVERSATIONS
RE-LOAD
Claudia La Rocco, Leisa Shelton, Takao Kawaguchi, Phillip Adams, Mette Edvardsen & Lucy Guerin
A series of lectures given by theorists, critics or academics who are a source of inspiration for those working with in the choreographic fields of the political or social (moving) bodies.
4 March — Claudia La Rocco in conversation with Leisa Shelton
5 March — Takao Kawaguchi in conversation with Phillip Adams
6 March — Mette Edvardsen in conversation with Lucy Guerin
// listen to RE-LOAD as podcasts in the LISTEN page //
Image Gregory Lorenzutti
WHAT IS IN-BETWEEN?
#1 (In)visible Futures = Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Jen Rae, Dr Chris Ryan moderated by Angharad Wynne-Jones
Inspired by the research devised by the Liveable Futures community, this conversation will discuss concrete creative solutions to survival under unpredictable planetary conditions and crisis. What role do artists play in devising future socially-responsive artistic practices focused on a collective sense of sustainability?
#2 (In)visible Matter(s)- Hellen Sky, Catherine Clover, Rhiannon Newton moderated by Amaara Raheem
What are the forces that claim agency in our bodies and in our lives? Matter can be understood in entirely material terms – the matter of a body, a building, of space, of environment – but it can also be thought as the effect of ad hoc configurations, accidental or premeditated combinations of human and nonhuman forces. Recognising that agency is not solely the terrain of humans, how are these forces captured, researched and embodied today?
#3 (In)visible Forces- Curating Dance – What Power Dynamics?
Helly Minarti, Barb Bolt, David Sequeira moderated by Collette Brennan
This conversation invites international and national presenters to reflect on the forces at play that define, constrain or inspire their everyday life, their relationship with (and responsibility to) artists and audiences and the position of power that these positions inherently hold.
#4 (In)visible Scores- Choreography as/for/of text, poetry & objects
Mette Edvarsten, Claudia La Rocco, Lucinda Strahn moderated by Sandra Parker
What happens when choreography intersects, interferes, inhabits the text, the poetic structures — situating movement (with)in objects? This conversation looks at exploring the inner choreographic scores that anchor a text, a poem or an object in their relationship to the moving body.
#5 (In)visible Times What is Contemporary in Contemporary Dance?
Linda Sastradipradja, Nareeporn Vachananda, Martin Hansen moderated by Carol Brown
Contemporary dance automatically positions dance within a certain notion of the contemporary within the very definition of the artform. And yet, dance holds time and remembers time differently. What exactly does it take to define a dance work as contemporary? Must a work refer to particular norms and traditions in order to qualify as contemporary, and in the case of dance, what would these be?Is contemporary dance the preserve of western lineages and traditions? How can, and do, other traditions equally claim the contemporary?
// listen to these conversations as podcasts in the LISTEN page //
Presented by Dancehouse in partnership with Abbotsford Convent, LGI/WYXZ, Temperance Hall, Chunky Move, The Commons/Fringe, University of Melbourne/Victorian College of the Arts, The Mill Adelaide