“Screendance Studio—virtual undoings”
I have just begun my six weeks in the Tanya Liedtke studio as artist in residence at the ADT’s International Centre for Choreography.
With this artistic residency I want to develop ideas arising from a paper I wrote for The International Journal of Screendance Vol. 4 in 2014 titled “Fleshing the Interface” https://screendancejournal.org/article/view/4526/3765; and two current/recent projects toward a choreographic work living both in real-time and as historical artefact. Communal Bloom Strategy (https://www.facebook.com/dancehubsa/videos/320093622640609) was a Dance.Focus commission from Dance Hub SA that brought together a group of dancers with whom I danced or studied in the 1980’s in Adelaide—Simi Roche who was my teacher/mentor during my BA Dance degree and beyond; Sarah Munn, my peer during my studies and co-founding member of Outlet Dance on graduation; and Sarah’s brother Aidan Munn, who also danced with Outlet Dance, and with Australian Dance Theatre and Leigh Warren and Dancers. We are all in our fifties or above and all still strongly engaged with our dancing bodies. I was thinking about bodies and sustainability. The title was sourced from the book “The Secret Network of nature” and brought these mature dance artists together to consider the questions of how we continue to move in the face of physical shifts, the migrations we’ve made, how we listen to our interior and where we settle in relation to locations, conditions, patterns.
The other project was a mentorship with a former student of mine from Deakin University, Emma Wilson, (https://emmawilsonprojects.com/residencybloghome/) which became an online creative dialogue that also acknowledged the history of danced exchange and how dance informs and is supported by other expressive and communicative forms. It has ignited in me an idea for developing an ongoing online creative exchange, a screendance studio that is an accumulation of personal response, a choreographic process transcending time and place.
While in residence in the Tanya Liedtke Studio I would work virtually (live Zoom interviews/improvisations or other online exchanges) with a number of mature dance and/or screendance artists with whom I have a history of collaboration or studio exchange. These include:
Elizabeth Cameron Dalman (Lake George, NSW)
Kelly Drummond Cawthon (Hobart, Tas)
Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt (Sweden)
Simon Ellis (London, UK)
Douglas Rosenberg (Madison, WI, USA)
Cinzia Schincariol (Germany/SA)
Emma Wilson (Qld)
A number of local dance artists will be invited into the live studio, predominantly those with historical connections to Australian Dance Theatre, for danced interviews—verbal and physical duets for camera and body.
A live choreographic sequence—‘the gathering’—will be developed from the editing of footage from the online and live exchanges. Local dancer and former ADT dancer, Aidan Munn, will collaborate with me live in the studio throughout the residency specifically honing the live performance of ‘the gathering’ sequence. Composer Stuart Day will develop a soundtrack combining text and music to accompany this.
that’s the plan…things will evolve…
