Dancehouse
2022 Season
Melbourne, Australia: Dancehouse kicks off its 2022 dance agenda with a celebration of touch, texture and bodily interfaces with a double-header from 3—6 March: CASTILLO by Prue Lang with Jana Castillo and Judy and Me by Rachael Wisby.
From 11—12 March, audiences can see the body alienated and alien embodied in a navigation between the real and the virtual with Sky Blue Mythic by Angela Goh and BeatStorm by Chris Chua.
From 16—19 March, Sky Blue Mythic sits alongside Ngioka Bunda-Heath‘s exploration of the underrepresented through personal letters to their siblings with the solo, Bridge.
See three works in one sitting from 24—27 March exploring the cunning of sirens with Lilian Steiner, the construct of time and linearity with Isabelle Beauverd and empathic Asian diasporic experience with Jennifer Ma & Collaborators.
Finally, the season ends with Sandra Parker’s one off durational performance inspired by sit-ins and feminist activism: Yield to Resistance on April 2.
All this and more with Season One bookended by Now Pieces February curated by Tony Yap and Now Pieces March curated by Paea Leach. Not to mention the auspicious No.15 of Andrew Morrish’s Take Five or More series on March 11.
Through the serendipity of COVID postponements, Dancehouse Season 1 celebrates a real richness in the voices, practices and talent of Australian choreographers in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even 70s!
Josh Wright, Dancehouse CEO & Artistic Director
There’s palpable excitement to see Angela Goh’s full-length Sky Blue Mythic after the short work won the Keir Choreographic Award in 2020. Investigating the real and the virtual, it is paired provocatively with the premiere of a new dance game by Chris Chua (BeatStorm) inviting audience as actual players in a dastardly fun physical multi-level challenge.
We see emotion, and the affect of the personal and interpersonal in new choreographic works by Ngioka Bunda-Heath with Bridge and Jenn Ma with Here We Are. Temporality surfaces via iteration in Take 5 or More, duration Yield to Resistance, and the intergenerational memories of Judy and Me. A sense of slipperiness and nuance see artists explore choreographic archetypes (Siren Dance), systems (Passing), and touch and texture (CASTILLO).
We welcome the return of live performance and are thrilled to see — despite it all — dance artists reflecting optimism, hope and a celebration to the return of liveness.
Judy and Me | Rachael Wisby
3—6 March
Judy and Me is an experimental psychosexual meditation. It was birthed from the interface of the body with faux and real matrilineal histories. It is an attempt to flood the body, liberating the individual from formal structures and systems. What remains is the unbridled unconscious, a bony ghost wandering the imagined space.
CASTILLO | Prue Lang with Jana Castillo
3—6 March
CASTILLO is a new dance performance sparked by an artistic synergy between Prue Lang and Jana Castillo. The work explores the taxonomy of touch and texture through the lens of choreography and neurodiversity. CASTILLO is danced and described via Pointe Shoes, Socks & Sneakers, exploring friction and texture to generate diverse and nuanced choreographic modalities.
Sky Blue Mythic | Angela Goh
11—19 March
Reality has always been augmented—by the limits of our human perception. Sky Blue Mythic stands at a threshold of cascading horizons. An avatar is adrift in an unknowable but familiar setting, where worlds loom, times loop, gestures distill and meanings distort. An interface of flesh searching for new ways of being, Sky Blue Mythic sees the body alienated, and the alien embodied.
BeatStorm | Chris Chua
11—12 March
Motion capture devices track and project two players into a virtual world in real-time as they travel along a fast-moving path set to high-energy electronic dance music evocative of video gaming. In each level, players must dodge a barrage of obstacles and collect items by physically moving; there is a one-to-one correspondence of movement between the real and the virtual.
Bridge | Ngioka Bunda-Heath
16—19 March
Bridge extends on Ngioka Bunda-Heath’s recent works Blood Quantum and Birrpai. This new contemporary dance work explores the dancer’s shared and divergent experiences through self-written personal letters addressed to their siblings. Follow the series of solos that interweave, connect and oppose, giving voice to the often overlooked, silenced, and underrepresented in society.
Passing | Isabelle Beauverd
24—27 March
A new contemporary dance work by Isabelle Beauverd, Passing explores the construct of time as a means of organisation and adherence. Within a multifaceted and complex framework, Passing reflects upon our subjective experience of time and our innate sensitives to it, questioning its linearity and existence. Passing sees performers stuck inside a matrix of inertia…
Siren Dance | Lilian Steiner
24—27 March
The Siren is like a politician — a master of manipulation, a trained performer. She calls her onlooker into her alluring arms, but is this an innocent gesture born from the desire for true connection or a cunning tactic and peacockish display of power? Honesty is slippery and intentions transform quickly. What might begin as truth can so easily become fiction.
We Are Here | Jennifer Ma & Collaborators
24—27 March
We Are Here by Jennifer Ma & Collaborators is an interdisciplinary dance work that aspires to actualise a fresh form by interweaving expressions of Krump, Contemporary Dance, Hip-Hop and Spoken Word. This work unfolds through a non linear narrative, piecing together a series of vignettes anchored in dance, placing empathy at the forefront of the Asian diasporic experience.
Yield to Resistance at Dancehouse | Sandra Parker
2 April
Inspired by sit-ins and feminist activism, this durational performance event welcomes the post-lockdown audience out of isolation and back to live dance. The work references the industrious period of Parker’s early practice as a young choreographer in 1980s/1990s Melbourne, where dance activated sites and spaces in disused halls, as well as the history of Dancehouse itself.
