Chime

A multi-disciplinary, site-specific performance which moved between several spaces in the Courthouse Arts building. The work combined improvised dance, choreographic practice, video projection and sound which utilized and computer-manipulated the Federation Handbells.

Clock it

Taken from the festival program : Clock It is a series of 20 short dance solos presented by 20 performers. The entire event runs like clockwork with selected soloists showcasing their choreographic ingenuity in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Dancers are accompanied by musician/sound artist Michael Havir. Curated by David Wells

Dance interrogations

A solo performance work incorporating live dance, spoken word and projected video.

Embodying principles - properties - potential in dance

Thi article explores outcomes of practice-led research. Discusses application of somatic movement, dance education and Body-Mind Centering® practice principles for physical preparation of dancers, contact improvisation, choreographic research and dance pedagogy.

Big clumsy feet stomping all over: shame, caution and fear in performance for peace building

This article examines some of the tensions implicit in performing in peace contexts. Drawing on the community-based performance form playback theatre, the article interrogates the (citizen) artist/performer within the demands of improvised performance. The article investigates the demands on the actor in a practice context that features refugee and asylum-seeker audience members/participants: the way in which performative risk, the risk of intimacy, the risk of getting it wrong and the risk of shaming self and other are considered in light of the challenges associated with the specificity of the ethnicity, cultural context/s, values and protocols of these audiences.

'Scott's aired a couple of things' : back to back theatre rehearse Ganesh versus the third Reich

 This chapter tracks the creation of Back to Back Theatre’s 2011 performance, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, based on first-hand observation of the final stages in devising and refining the work. Ganesh traces two parallel narrative strands – that of an imagined journey of the Hindu God into the dark heart of Nazi Germany to reclaim the sacred Hindu symbol of the swastika, and the narrative which constantly threatens to engulf the Ganesh story – the fraught relations between a group of disabled artists and their non-disabled director as they negotiate the process of making the work.

The focus of this chapter is the development of a single scene from the performance work, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, tracing it’s evolution through periods of creative development and rehearsal. The stark contrast between the working practices observed on the studio floor and the brutally knowing and parodic representation of power relations in rehearsal seen in the performance work testifies to the peculiar and productive self-reflexivity that generates the work of Back To Back Theatre. An account and analysis of both real and fictional rehearsals reveal how Back to Back’s creative processes position members of the ensemble “perceived to have intellectual disabilities” as entirely legitimate professional artists, while claiming the authority of ‘outsider artists’ to challenge perceptions and representations of disability.

Something like an emergency

‘Something like an emergency’, a sonic poem recorded on CD, investigates the hunger of writing as a desire, not for a return of the dead, but for a breakthrough of impasses in language, both in love and in the writer’s (frustrated) translation of vision. Proceeding from Bachelard’s phenomenological observation that the poetic image puts language in a state of emergence, this work argues, instead, that poetry puts language in a state of emergency. Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of music as a deterriorialization of the refrain; a rhythmic pattern which marks out a territory, is invoked in both the music performance and in the words. The writing uses a ‘matting’ (rhizomatic) effect in its verse fragments which echo and refract others. Reverberation is also explored in the piano and its sonic processing which provides elements of dissonance and consonance, refracting dialogues in the text. Voice and music sometimes argue, sometimes agree, and sometimes are indistinguishable. However, this dialectic is further disturbed: at times the piano and voice seem to pay no attention to each other, taking off on their own ‘lines of flight’, in subversion of ‘collaboration’. In its use of recorded improvisational techniques this work also challenges the ‘superiority’ of live improvisation.
It was first performed at Double Dialogues conference, ‘The Hunger Artist: Food and the Arts’, Toronto, 2010. The text and accompanying discursive article form a book chapter in 2012 Food and Appetites: The Hunger Artist and the Arts, Ann McCulloch and Pavlina Radia(eds). It has been broadcast on RRR, 3CR radios and is released on CD and Youtube. By invitation it was performed at the Midsumma Festival, 2014.

Insights from Arakawa and Gins' Table

Within the four-day festival organised by Keane, j., Prohm, A. and Manning, E. called "The Proceeding Procedure: Festival of In/Confluence"there was an evening of performances, reading, improvisation and films curated by Alan Prohm and Mike Hornblow, I was invited to read from my current writing within this evening's program.

Moving towards a group dance

This paper describes the process of the creation of an improvised group dance, discussion how both the dance and the group came into being through practising with what were called 'scores'. The dance was created as part of a three year practice-led research project. The question asked on conducting the research was What is the work of 'scores' in the creation of an improvised group dance? where scores were verbal propositions, usually relating to physical, bodily, or movement notions. The aspect of the overall project discussed in this paper concerns the coming into being of of the group in both social and material terms.

Illuminous: performance 1

Improvised performance artwork, collaboration between creative writer and trumpet player. The work involved a live performance, duration 40 minutes, of projected, improvised creative writing and improvised trumpet playing. Use was also made of a sculptural piece, on the set, referring to ecological themes of the work.

Entwinement

This is an original performance art work, entirely improvised in a live performance space. It incorporated improvised creative writing projected into the performance space and improvised trumpet playing, working with themes of everyday emotional experiences in relationship to environmentalist- and deep-ecology-related themes and concerns.

"Music therapy helped me get back doing": perspectives of music therapy participants in mental health services

BACKGROUND: Mental health service development internationally is increasingly informed by the collaborative ethos of recovery. Service user evaluation of experiences within music therapy programs allows new phenomena about participation in services to be revealed that might otherwise remain unnoticed. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to demonstrate how asking service users about their experience of music therapy can generate useful information, and to reflect upon the feedback elicited from such processes in order to gain a deeper understanding of how music therapy is received among service users in mental health. METHODS: Six mental health service users described their experiences of music therapy in one or two individual interviews. Transcripts of interviews were analyzed using the procedures and techniques of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. RESULTS: Interviews with mental health service users provided rich, in-depth accounts reflecting the complex nature of music therapy participation. Super-ordinate themes refer to the context in which music therapy was offered, the rich sound world of music in music therapy, the humanity of music therapy, and the strengths enhancing opportunities experienced by service users. CONCLUSIONS: Participants indicated that they each experienced music therapy in unique ways. Opinions about the value of music therapy were revealed through an interview process in which the researcher holds an open attitude, welcoming all narrative contributions respectfully. These findings can remind practitioners of the importance of closely tuning into the perspectives and understandings of those who have valuable expertise to share about their experience of music therapy services in mental health.

The ethos of the mover/witness dyad: an experimental frame for participatory performance

This article reflects on a dance improvisation project in which the foundational relationship of the Mover Witness Dyad (MWD), the private exchange between mover and witness (and more commonly known as Authentic Movement) became an ethical and physical paradigm for an improvised performance. The untitled performance (conceived by Shaun McLeod and danced by Olivia Millard, Peter Fraser, Jason Marchant, Sophia Cowen and Shaun McLeod) took place over three nights in Melbourne in November 2014. It was specifically informed by the experiences, observations and questions drawn from an extensive studio practice of the MWD by the dancers. The practice of the MWD is a therapeutic relationship between contemplative mover and attentive witness. Falling within the wider field of Dance Movement Therapy, the MWD has uses as a therapeutic aid, in personal development and also as a context for exploring dance improvisation. An important feature of the MWD is that attention, in whatever manifestation, is directed inwardly and is engaged bodily. The form parallels dance improvisation in its emphasis on open, exploratory movement, which is grounded in the particular sensibility each individual brings to embodiment. Never intended as a performance practice, the MWD has nonetheless been used by dancers as a method for investigating dancing and towards informing or generating performance content. This project threw up considerations of values; in this case values associated with audience participation and the ethics of ‘witnessing’ improvised dance.