KCA SEMI FINALS PROGRAM ONE
presented by DANCEHOUSE, CARRIAGEWORKS & THE KEIR FOUNDATION with the AUSTRALIA COUNCIL
03 March 2020 - 07 March 2020
PROGRAM ONE
4 works x 20 min + interval
TUE, 3 MARCH - 7pm
THU, 5 MARCH - 7pm
SAT, 7 MARCH - 2pm
JO LLOYD (VIC)
THE FARM (QLD)
RIANA HEAD-TOUSSAINT (NSW)
ANGELA GOH (NSW)
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Jo Lloyd — That's Her Name
Choreographer/Performer: Jo Lloyd
Designer/Performer: Andrew Treloar
Composer/Performer: Duane Morrison
That's Her Name will investigate the body as an inscriptive surface augmented through movement and materials. Lloyd uses unfamiliar methodologies to uncover physical vocabularies and behaviours between the three performers, to display the unresolved body in performance, serving as a dialogue and reflective encounter for those viewing and being viewed. Using fictional and actual history as stimulus, physicalities will be activated based on the real and imagined. Fictional characters will be performed as evidence of this history. Language will be used simultaneously as a system and as a proposition for the work, to compose the sound score, choreograph the costumes and direct the action. The dance is an ongoing negotiation between performers — materials towards a choreography. What will occur has the potential to be a two-hour opera in 20 minutes, the preparation for a public speech, a crime scene, or all of these.
Jo Lloyd is an influential Australian dance artist based in Melbourne. She works with choreography as a social encounter, revealing behaviour over particular durations and circumstances. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Lloyd's body of work has been recognised and lauded both nationally and internationally. She has presented work in Japan, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Dance Massive, Liveworks, the Museum of Contemporary Art, PICA and Mona Foma. Her recent work OVERTURE (Arts House 2018 and Melbourne Festival 2019) received three Green Room Awards and a Helpmann Award nomination. Lloyd has worked with Choreographers Gideon Obarzanek, Lucy Guerin, Shelley Lasica and Sandra Parker. She was the recipient of two Asialink Residencies (Japan) and the Dancehouse Housemate Residency in 2008. In 2016 she was the Resident Director of Lucy Guerin Inc. In 2018 she received an Australia Council Fellowship and is a current Resident Artist at The SUBSTATION.
The Farm — Hold me closer Tony Danza
Concept: The Farm (Kate Harman, Michael Smith and Gavin Webber)
Performers: Kate Harman and Michael Smith
Music: Anna Whitaker
Design: Vilma Mattila
Once we hear something, it can't be unheard and once we say something it can't be unsaid. Hold me closer Tony Danza is an investigation into how we form meaning and a provocation that perhaps our understanding of the world is intrinsically flawed. The light-hearted reference to a commonly misheard song lyric contains a deeper proposition about how we accumulate information and the damage we can do with our opinions and a lack of empathy or connectedness. The Farm questions the randomness of the things we find important, how we form meaning and the whole idea of certainty itself. They speak about the world by embodying their experience within it, where the act of performing reflects a desire to be an involved and evolved participant on our planet.
The Farm (Kate Harman, Michael Smith and Gavin Webber) is a network of like minded artists and designers who enjoy collaborating together and share a love of art both high and low. They create physical performances that range from traditional theatre and dance to outdoor installations, film and immersive theatrical experiences. They aim to defy expectations, including our own, and are are driven by a desire to connect to anyone, from dance and theatre virgins to aficionados and professionals. Often described as cinematic, their work is based on universal subjects and themes that matter.
Riana Head-Toussaint — Very Excellent Disabled Dancing
Choreographer/performer: Riana Head-Toussaint
Performers: Georgia Cranko and Holly Craig
Videographer: Lux Eterna
Sound Designer/Composer: Stephen Dobson
Outside Eye: Imogen Yang
In Very Excellent Disabled Dancing, three visibly disabled dancers expose the distinct, persistent differences in the way dance is consumed and understood when performed by people with disability. The work involves a synergy of movement and video. The dancers physically demonstrate the effects of the external, objectifying gaze, amplified by capturing and projecting their movement via live video feed.This is then contrasted against movement from a place of knowledge and resistance — magnified by intimate, pre-recorded footage. The dancers lay bare anatomical preoccupations, saccharine sympathy and uninformed hostility — confronting and defiantly reframing the dominant gaze to make way for genuine engagement with, understanding of, and appreciation for diversity in dance.
Riana Head-Toussaint is a multidisciplinary artist with disability, who uses a manual wheelchair for mobility. Her practice spans a variety of areas including dance, theatre, immersive/participatory performance, acrobatics and film. She regularly collaborates with other artists and non-artists, and embedding access is an important part of her artistic process. Her work often involves interrogating dominant systems, structures and ways of thinking. Head-Toussaint has undertaken professional development with a range of companies and individuals, including Candoco Dance Company (UK), Bill Shannon (US), Gravity & Other Myths (Aus), Nat Randall (Aus) and James Batchelor (Aus). In 2020, she begins an Artistic Associate role with contemporary performance company Branch Nebula. Head-Toussaint's solo and ensemble work has been presented at ATYP, WOW Festival, Shopfront Arts Co-Op, Sydney Fringe, Crack Theatre Festival, 107 Projects and Carriageworks. As well as being an artist, Head-Toussaint is a qualified lawyer, access consultant and disability activist.
Angela Goh — Sky Blue Mythic
Choreographer/Performer: Angela Goh
Composer: Corin Ileto
Curtains open. There is no dance being performed on the stage. The dance that is not being performed is a ballet, Giselle. The backdrop is medieval and the elements are supernatural. It's Act 2, and you know that someone died at the end of Act 1. Time is an arrow that has been shot off stage, out of frame. You go out-of-render, looking for it, but it's nowhere to be found. Damn. But then! Duration has no direction. Good. We will orient ourselves here. Sky Blue Mythic imagines dance as a non-human entity, existing on timescales longer than our cultural narratives, in spaces beyond the locality of the body, and forms unknowable to human-centric sensing. In a quest to move away from anthropocentrism, Sky Blue Mythic allows dance to alienate itself from human expression, in turn requiring the body to become an interface rather than a vehicle. By imagining a history of dance that is not humancentric, Sky Blue Mythic encounters possible worlds beyond our own reflection. This work confronts the notion that we do not exist in a vacuum but are staring into a void.
Angela Goh is a Sydney based dancer and choreographer working with dance in theatres, galleries, and telepathetic spaces. Her work considers the body in relationship to commodity, materiality, technology, and feeling. She approaches choreography as a situation and a container in which not yet formed relations can grow, and with them the possibility of accessing the world. Goh thinks of dance as a friend, as a condition with which to feel the world, as a bearer of knowledge, and as the point where everything starts and nothing ends. Her works have been presented widely in Australia as well as the USA, the UK, France, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Taiwan, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Denmark and the Netherlands. She received the danceWEB Europe scholarship, the Create NSW Emerging Artist Fellowship and was named Best Artist in the 2017 FBi Sydney Music Arts and Culture awards.
The 2020 Keir Choreographic Award is presented by Dancehouse, Carriageworks and the Keir Foundation, with support from the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
