'The Dying Swan' repurposed
Melbourne's Dancehouse will present a new work, (re)PURPOSE: the MVMNT, by Housemate artist-in-residence Natalie Abbott, in July.
In (re)PURPOSE: the MVMNT, Abbott has appropriated the influential ballet solo, The Dying Swan (1905), to examine our expectations of dance performances, female characters and the limits of the body. She has taken a lateral, multi-directional approach that both resists and caters to these expectations.
Abbott's work regularly explores the dynamics of disparate bodies in space through experiences of vulnerability - finding comfort in discomfort as a communal experience. (re)PURPOSE: the MVMNT is a duet performed by two bodies that are representative of stages in a lifecycle - navigating linear ideas of birth, life, middle/void and death. Using borrowed and recontexualised signifiers from dance, the horror genre and pop music, Abbott has created a lo-fi, dramatised spectacle that begins with familiarity before unraveling to reveal the ungroundedness of image-consumerism in the Internet Age.
Australia's premiere thereminist, Miles Brown, also front-man of cult dark-psych-space-Giallo legends, The Night Terrors, with experimental sound artist, Alex Cuffe (Sky Needle), have produced a soundscape that evokes a suspenseful, unsettling atmosphere to complement the visual spectacle. The title itself references Justin Bieber’s 2015 album, Purpose, for which he released dance videos for all its tracks in a project entitled The Movement.
Dates: 5-8 July (8pm), 9 July (5pm) Duration: 60 mins (no interval)
Where: Dancehouse, Carlton