Dance Massive is about to hit Melbourne, with shows at Arts House, Dancehouse and the Malthouse Theatre. Arts House Creative Producer Angharad Wynne-Jones gives us the lowdown on what’s happening at Arts House during Dance Massive.
DA: How did you choose artists for Dance Massive?
AWJ: At Arts House we've curated artists who we think are making the most exciting work in Australia right now and presenting their most recent works. The particular concerns these choreographers and artists are investigating, politically, formally and socially could not be more different - from Rawcus's focus on cataloguing the array of diverse bodies, Vicki Van Hout's creation of new choreographic language exploring the oldest living culture on the planet, to Phillip Adams' investigation into queerness, all of the nine works reveal the ignition points and fault lines of our cultural landscape.
DA: Tell our readers about the shows on offer at Dancehouse as part of Dance Massive…
AWJ: There are nine works being presented at Arts House, as part of Dance Massive, of which seven are Australian premieres.
Rawcus, a 20-strong ensemble composed of performers with and without disabilities, premiere their new work Catalogue. Slow-cooked through Culture Labs in 2013 and 2014 Rawcus’s work could be described as a kind of portraiture – an imperfect catalogue of humanity – hovering between dance, theatre and visual art, and asserting the right to be vulnerable, and to make space for the unexpected.
Multi-award winning artists Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe combine their talents as phenomenal choreographer, brilliant composer, sound designer and programmer and their jaw-dropping virtuosic talent as performers to come together with 64 robotic percussion instruments to create an insanely precise work Meeting, which is part installation, part robotic choreography an all about the experience of being alive, counting the moments and our ongoing sometimes tortured relationship with the digital and the analogue.
Warandjeri woman Vicki Van Hout’s Long Grass is a dance theatre work about life on the margins, in the long grass of the towns of the top end. Combining live weaving, shadow play into an idiosyncratic dance language developed from the NT’s rich indigenous cultures and Vicki’s own distinctive choreographic practice – this work finds warmth and humour in a situation of homelessness often seen as unremittingly bleak. It premiered at Sydney Festival in January.
Overworld by Rebecca Jensen and Sarah Aiken was first presented in Next Wave, by these two young choreographers making their mark on the independent dance scene in Melbourne and beyond. From the team that brought us the collective ritual of Deep Soulful Sweats, Overworld unashamedly appropriates neo paganism, yoga, music videos, death metal, online gaming, erotica and you tube. Silly and smart, superficial and thoughtful, Rebecca and Sarah are investigating how we navigate our way through so much media to make some meaning together.
Despite her physical exuberance and youthful energy, Ros Crisp is actually an elder of the dance world and has over three decades of improvisatory practice that is evident in every muscle and decision taken and not taken in her dancing. In Boom she collaborates with other artists of the highest calibre the enigmatic Helen Herbertson, designer ben Cobham and situates the work in a hidden treasure of fast disappearing Melbourne, a stunning wood warehouse five mins away from North Melbourne Town Hall. This is a rare treat to see artists of such consummate talent in an exquisite location.
Lucy Guerin’s work brilliantly balances between conceptual examination and the creation of a hyper articulated choreographic grammar that consistently speaks through, over and under the conceptual surface. In Motion Picture her subject is a 1950 film noir classic, and like the dancers we are as audiences caught between the screen and stage, constantly being forced to make choices about who and what to watch when. It’s a forensic investigation into the language of dance and film by one of Australia’s most gifted and rigorous choreographers, with a team of outstanding dancers.
Merge, by Melanie Lane, brings together talents… the world of electro music with UK artist Clark and visual arts with Ash Keating, with four powerful dancers to create a work that tells the history of the universe, of colonisation, of the fallibility of humanity and the inevitability of individual failure. Sounds depressing? Its not…its sublimely and cascading poetic, one of those works where form and narrative co-join immaculately, to create something profound and intensely satisfying. We are indeed lucky to have Melanie Lame return to Melbourne after a decade of making and performing in Europe and Indonesia and contribute her considerable talents to the Melbourne scene.
Stampede the Stampede continues Tim Darbyshire’s geological exploration of the dance terrain. Applying a series of impossible and improbable tasks to his rigorous methodology and scrutiny Tim explores the edges of our consciousness, the tectonic plates of our unconscious, with extraordinarily talented collaborators - Madeline Flynn, Tim Humphrey, Jennifer Hector and Bosco Shaw.
And last but not least what would we do without Ballet Lab?
Adventurous, brilliant and spectacularly weird Kingdom sees the Ballet Lab boys at their queer zenith. Four long-term collaborators Luke George, Matt Day, Rennie McDougall and Phillip Adams explore art life and sexuality inside and out, up close and intimately. You might loath it or love it, but you’ll definitely want to be in on the conversation about it.
DA: Aside from performances, what else is happening at Arts House for Dance Massive?
AWJ: Arts House is delighted to present a new initiative - the national indigenous choreographic residency, in association with the indigenous program within the City of Melbourne arts and culture. Led by Mariaa Randall and Jacob Boheme, this local and national lab will explore and exchange contemporary culture and dance practices by indigenous choreographers.
And in collaboration with Taipei Arts Festival and initiated by Leisa Shelton we will also be hosting 3 Taiwanese artists and 3 Melbourne artists in a residency that will have WIP’s in DM and culminate in performances in August 2015 in Taiwan.
Dance Massive runs 10-22 March in Melbourne. Find out more about what’s happening at Arts House, and the two other Dance Massive venues, Dancehouse and the Malthouse Theatre here.
Balletlab's Kingdom. Photo: Jeff Busby.