Sunday 7 May 2023
From, Amongst, Within
Choreography: Josh Freedman and the dancers
Music: Promises by Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points
Dance studios in the ACT represent diverse, vibrant communities and the dances we create reveal manifold stories in motion.
“These are some words from the curators of Australian Dance Week which informed this work. From here, my thoughts went toward embodied memories, how our individual qualities and stories can both separate and connect us, and being together but not uniform. While devising we played around with touch, breath, interrelationships and images. I’m very grateful for the dancers’ collaborative input throughout.” – Josh Freedman
Premiered at the National Portrait Gallery as part of AusDance ACT’s Identity for Australian Dance Week 2023.
Leaning, Rippling, Breathing
Choreography: James Batchelor in collaboration with the GOLDs
Music: Original sound design by Morgan Hickinbotham
Leaning, Rippling, Breathing is a new short work by choreographer James Batchelor in collaboration with the Canberra Dance Theatre GOLDs and accompanied by an original sound design by Morgan Hickinbotham.
Inspired by the style and principles of Wiener Moderne (Viennese Modernism) and Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance), this piece emerges from a workshop in which James shared with the dancers his research on modern dance pioneer Gertrud Bodenwieser. Fleeing from the Nazi occupation of Vienna in 1938, Bodenwieser emigrated to Australia and produced a lasting legacy that has echoed across several generations. Referencing the choreographies of The Blue Danube and The Waterlilies as taught to him by Ruth Osborne and Eileen Kramer, James has reimagined this corporeal vocabulary through a contemporary lens.
This performance offers a contemplative addendum to James’ full length work Shortcuts to Familiar Places (2022). It echoes the choreography and structure of James’ solo Breathing Gesture, expanding the notion of the embodied archive as an intergenerational constellation.
Today I Am
Choreography: Gretel Burgess
Music: Life’s Adventure by Tim Myers, A Small Blue Thing by Suzanne Vega.
Premiered at the National Portrait Gallery, Saturday 22 October 2022 as part of Out of the Frame. Also performed for Australian Dance Week 2023 on Sunday 7 May 2023.