Surface TensionsBody | Land | Relation
Immersive Physical Workshop
for dance and visual artists
4 - 7 July 2009
Hovea, Perth Hills
Cost: $300 full / $260 conc.
Includes 4xnights basic accom, & food.
More info: http://orrandsweeney.blogspot.com
Contact Marnie — e: dance at filtered dot com / ph: 0412 115 925
Dance artists Marnie Orr (Aus) and Rachel Sweeney (UK) lead a 4-day residential workshop for professional dance and visual artists exploring creative approaches to site based movement and visual performance practices.
Using body mapping | micro & macro site exploration | topographic movement training,
Orr & Sweeney steer an interdisciplinary performance investigation into perception, propriocetion and perspective exploring the relationship of body and land.
The working day is divided between studio practice including a Bodyweather MB workout (mind/body, muscle/bone), on-site solo/group improvisation work, micro-performances and discussion/review sessions. Includes visiting field specialists from geology/ecology, video presentation, peer mentoring and access to literature.
For the duration participants stay in a workshop studio on ’Noonyarra’ property in Hovea, Perth Hills. Participants share evening meals, cooking & cleaning duties.
Company Bio:
ROCKface was founded in 2006 as the research arm of the Orr/Sweeney partnership, investigating site based performance and movement for the development of physicality and its associated verbal language for understanding across disciplines. Our work is sustained through rigorous studio-to-field training utilising immersive, inhabitational and durational processes. With combined backgrounds in Butoh and Bodyweather practice, the root of our work is to highlight the sensory, kinetic intelligence of the dancer working in immersive conditions.
We draw from intuitive and proprioceptive memory working in distinct perceptual modes of engagement with a particular site or environment, and also in consultation with a range of ‘field’ professionals working in the disciplines of geography and ecology, and other local knowledge holders.
Ongoing research in the UK is steered through Mapping Project in partnership with Aune Head Arts, supported by Centre for Sustainable Futures, University of Plymouth and Dance in Devon. Future projects include: research collaboration with Willem Montagne, Geographer and Dartmoor National Park Authorities Representative, utilising Geographic Information Systems within a contemporary choreographic / cartographic inquiry (Summer 2010); a photographic exhibition of ROCKface work, in collaboration with Devon dance photographer, Kevin Clifford at the Duchy Exhibition Centre, Dartmoor, Devon (Summer 2009).
ROCKface recently began a relation into Australia upon Marnie Orr’s return home after four years based in UK. Via a virtual exchange in 2008 Orr & Sweeney began Transnational Terrain project, investigating geographical and cultural correlations across city and wilderness sites, between Plymouth docks / Dartmoor National Park (UK) and Perth city / Kalamunda National Park (WA) through solo/duo performance walks and body-place interrogations identifying the camera eye and frame as holding agency.
This work continues by feeding into the upcoming Inhabitation project, July 2009, a research and development phase toward a multi-media performance and photographic exhibition programmed in the south-west 3rd annual Bridgetown digital media, film & arts festival, Stream Dreaming, Jan/Feb 2010. Orr & Sweeney will work with a collection of performers and media artists as well as two environmental systems managers working between Perth hills (Kalamunda/Hovea/John Forrest National Park) and Bridgetown, two locations on the edge of the geologically significant Yilgarn crator.
The predecessor to Bridgetown is Surface Tensions, the immersive physical workshop presented as a 4-day group residency in Perth's hills.
