This week I am presenting my dance and screen work "Dance Interrogations" in Hobart as part of the Ten Days on the Island Festival. The work began as my solo in an underground tunnel at the 2012 Adelaide Fringe, then a blacked out hotel room at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, relocated into a train carriage at the 2013 Melbourne Fringe, and built into a two-part site specific work adding a duet with Melinda Smith in a hallway in the Abbotsford Convent in 2015.
Between 2013–15 the work formed the performance research of my PhD at Deakin University—”Dance Interrogations—the body as creative interface in Live Screen/Dance.”
The title has stayed as my duet practice with Melinda Smith continues to develop and in 2016 we secured Australia Council and Creative Victoria funding, and Footscray Community Arts Centre in-kind support, to develop the work, specifically building in harness/aerial work to build Melinda’s role and vocabulary. We were then invited to be “movers in residence” for the inaugural Salamanca Moves festival in Hobart, where we won the A.W.A.R.D. show. The award included a grant to return and be a part of the Ten Days on the Island program in March 2017.
It has been an interesting collaboration with Melinda, who has cerebral palsy, over the past several years. It brings up lots of thoughts and strategies in relation to how we can work with/in our bodies. In relation to dance technique I have found that working in duet with a dancer with a disability has opened up new artistic terrain for me as a dancer—inclusive strategies are not about working in a limited range or "dumbing down" physical virtuosity...they offer expanded views and new possibilities.
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