• Photo:  Jeff Busby.
    Photo: Jeff Busby.
  • Photo:  Jeff Busby.
    Photo: Jeff Busby.
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Luke George’s new work NOT ABOUT FACE sees viewers clothed in full-body shrouds as he explores the relationship between performers and audience.  Nina Levy caught up with George to find out more about this innovative dance artist and his latest work.

NL:  In effect, you have masked your audience for NOT ABOUT FACE – where did that idea come from?

LG:  There are a few places that this idea came from... one was that out of my work NOW NOW NOW (2010).  I became more and more interested in the intimacy, connection and transmittance of things - ideas, energy, information - between performer and audience. 

In NOW NOW NOW, we perform with no recorded soundtrack in a very lit room where everyone, including the audience, is visible. In one part of the work, we ask one audience member to enter the performance and follow a series of instructions delivered via headphones. I was interested in our audience's and my own response to this territory of audience interaction and participation, which is generally a big no-go with people. There was a great electricity and physical empathy happening to a level that I hadn't felt in a show before.

I began exploring this further for NOT ABOUT FACE, specifically around what and how things transfer between people, between different bodies and minds. I researched how this is understood in practices of performance, philosophy, spirituality, science and the supernatural. I also became interested in what it meant to suspend my identity and the identity of my audience, as a way to go beyond the surface and have a deeper experience of each other, feeling and sensing each other and what transpires between us. I started by covering our faces. Later it became full body shrouds, which suited many aspects of the explorations of the work as well as facilitating this altered viewing/doing experience. In a sense, the FACE in the title refers to the surface, the id, the identifier of someone or something like a name. I am interested in looking at what happens if we remove the identifier - how do we perceive and experience what we can't necessarily see, and how do we 'know' it?

The shrouds also supported my interest in this piece being completely interactive and participatory; audience members feel less self-conscious under the shroud and more willing to do things and take part in the action of the work. Actually, for half of the work I also wear a shroud, I like the experience of performing under it.

NL:  I remember seeing your  work LIFESIZE in Perth in 2008 and I recall that there were masks in that show.  Is there a connection between the two works, one which masks the performers (at least for some of the time) and one which masks the audience?

LG:  I hadn't thought of this connection before! Thank you for offering one. In a sense I see the works as being very different from each other. But maybe there is a connection... In LIFESIZE we (the 2 performers) put on the masks, which were semi-transparent/fleshy/hyper-real/life-like masks, as a way to interact with each other in the 'real' world, after existing in imagined and virtual worlds. I also liked how it made us feel like life-size dummies, like Real Dolls (hyper-real companion dolls for adults). I liked the weird intimacy that ensued in the physicality between us. This actually became my favourite part of that piece; we turned off the video cameras and projections, the intense pop-soundtrack faded to only be the speakers buzz and drone, there was an awkward and sincere realness about it all. Or an interest in exploring what it means to be with each other and with yourself. So yes, I can see the connection now! I would never have made that before.

NL:  You’ve performed NOT ABOUT FACE to test audiences – how do people feel about wearing a shroud?  What kind of a response have you had?

LG:  It gives people a sense of agency, that they can do what they want and follow their impulses… get involved, back away, be obedient, or not, be quiet, be noisy, keep the shroud on or take it off, and choose where and how they watch and participate in what's happening in the work. There are multiple potential readings of what the shrouds are; ghosts, identity suspension devices, clan robes, burkas, cloaks of invisibility, or bedsheets with the eye holes cut out. I like all of those. People have spoken about sudden shifts of how they're perceiving and reading the any given situation that the piece presents, and that they're part of the reading, that they're somehow responsible or implied in that. 

NL:  I hear that New York-based artist Hilary Clark will be collaborating with you – what is her role in the work?

LG:  Yes! I'm soooooooo excited to be bringing Hilary to Melbourne to collaborate with me and with the whole project's team of artists. Hilary is an incredible dance artist who performs, makes and teaches. We met and have been performing together on tour around the U.S. on a work by Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (NYC) called And lose the name of action. I was instantly drawn to working with Hilary and invited her to collaborate with me on NOT ABOUT FACE.

I've been teaching the performance to Hilary so I could step out of performing and direct the work, something that is so challenging to do when you're performing the solo you're making. Hilary is collaborating with me on realizing the work. And I've come to be really curious in having another performer (who is incredibly talented) perform the work, as me. So who knows... Hilary may end up performing a night or two of the run in Melbourne.

NL:  What’s next for you, after the Melbourne season of NOT ABOUT FACE?

LG:  Absolute wonderful international craziness.

As soon as NOT ABOUT FACE finishes I get on a plane and go to Bergen, Norway for a creative development residency with artists Heine Avdal (Norway/Belgium), Yukiko Shinoazki (Japan/Belgium) and Miguel Gutierrez (USA). In December I return to Melbourne to premiere a new short piece commissioned for Lucy Guerin Inc's "Pieces for Small Spaces" season. Then I return to New York to perform NOW NOW NOW at the American Realness Festival, New York's renowned edgy downtown performance festival. I have performed some of my short pieces in New York before, this will be my New York debut of my full length work. I am sooooooooo excited!  Since working there over the past two years I have developed such a deep connection and love of the dance and performance scene there and its artists and I can't wait to share my work with them and I am so honoured to be one of the first 'non-American' artists to be programmed in the history of Realness.

Next year in October we have been invited to perform NOT ABOUT FACE at the Chocolate Factory Theatre also in New York. So it's NY NY! Very excited and can't quite believe it's all happening and that I will be traveling so much. But I love it and can't wait.

 

You can catch NOT ABOUT FACE at Dancehouse, October 9-13. 

Bookings:  www.dancehouse.com.au

Photo: Jeff Busby.

Photo:  Jeff Busby.

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