Darwin, Batchelor, Angurugu, Broome

Throughout the year, 1993

Sarah Calver returned from maternity leave to take on the full-time position of Community Dancer in Residence – Brown’s Mart Community Arts. David went part-time, and was able to take on residencies away from Darwin. It was also a significant year for Brown’s Mart as a community arts institution reaching its 21st birthday.

1993 was a very busy and rewarding year, one where we have been able to see the beginnings of new directions and possibilities. We are becoming stronger in our own philosophies and stronger in recognising and promoting that which is particularly Territorian about our work. The creation of Silent Thought is perhaps the beginning of creating a repertoire of easily tourable work that is of particular relevance to the Territory. It is our intention to continue developing this kind of work. Our distance from other places allows for a unique style to develop. It is time for us to stop getting our feet caught on the issues surrounding the "tyranny of distance" but rather look for the opportunities. With two dance officers we were able to maintain activity in Darwin, while David was able to travel to other regions for events, such as Angurugu Residency on Groote Eylandt, Broome for the Waderbirds project, and Melbourne for Greenmill Conference.

We developed how we worked and talked about our community engagement. We created the idea of  Open House, and made an invitation for people to showcase their work. This allowed a great outcome for less work as well as a platform to show experimental or unfinished work. With the new Gathering Ground, we looked at ways to collaborate with groups more fully rather than just perform one after another, creating a more cohesive community event that all felt a part of. We were also exploring how our Local Troupe professional dancers could take guidance roles in a larger performance context. It was becoming clear that the idea of the Brown's Mart Community Dance Program needed a new name as the nebulkous feel of the program was calling nout for a more solid core. 

Creative Personnel

Sarah Calver, David McMicken, Tim Newth, Berenice Franklin and Lisa Campbell

Darwin Dance Mob

Classes, workshops and performances throughout the year.
Classes – rehearsal room Entertainment Centre: Older Adults (Grey Panthers), Children under 10, teenagers, adults. Tutors: Sarah Calver, David McMicken, Maggi Phillips, and Berenice Franklin. Covering Technique, alignment, improvisation, contact release, choreographic skills and creative dance. This community dance group explores the many faces of modern dance and encourages people of all walks of life to come together to explore dance in their lives. Guest tutors include Greg Sheehan, drumming and dance percussion, and Claire Haige - Bhuto and Body Weather workshops
Additional workshops:
Sarah and David taught Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre dance workshops, throughout the year, culminating in a showing at the end of the year
Workshops were taught at Casuarina Community College with choreographic explorations based on personal backgrounds. Many of these students are from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds.
Natalie Sprite took writing workshops with the Older Adults Dance Mob (Grey Panthers)
Performances took place at:
• Mixtures at the Mart
• Evergreens Club (three performances)
• Museum Open Day
• Senior Citizens Week
• Batchelor Area School
• University for the Third Age
• Land

Local Troupe

Professional Dance stream
Land - November 24-27. Brown’s Mart Theatre.
This was an evening of three new dance works. Silent Thought choreographed by Tim Newth and Performed by Sarah Calver and David McMicken. As I Am, choreographed by Sarah Calver, and danced by Lisa Campbell, Helen Haritos, Berenice Franklin, and Sandy Stewart. Chaos, choreographed by David McMicken and danced by Sarah Calver, Berenice Franklin and Lisa Campbell, featuring Darwin Dance Mob Adults Moira Stronach, Linda Barry, Nicolien Rubin, Lucinda Murrell, Brolga, and Ingrid Ulpin. David worked with Berenice Franklin to work with computer imagery created from a Fractal program and project this into a cloud of dry ice.

Other Local Troupe performances:
• Evergreen Luncheon
• Evergreen Easter Show
• Mixtures at the Mart – March
• Arafura Games Opening Ceremony
• Open House
• Dance Week
• Poster Run
• Mindil Under the Moon
• Batchelor Are School

Community Dance Performances

Mixtures at Marrara: Arafura Stadium, involved two Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre (CIYT) groups, local troupe and dance mob.

Mixtures at the Mart, (March 27th) showcasing the many dance talents of such a diversity of groups and individuals in an exhilarating evening of dance. Performances included Darwin Dance Mob, Kulay Lupa, The Palmerston Tappers, The Grey Panthers, and Lisa Campbell School of Dancing.

Open House. An evening of dance with a difference, all draft works, works in progress Sunday April 18th, 6.30 start

Gathering Ground: June 4th and 5th with guest artists Juniper Tree Dance Company, and Darwin Juke Box Rock, Corrugated Iron, Darwin Dance Mob (including the older adults newly renamed The Grey Panthers), Local Troupe, Artability, and an audience participation dance A Darwin Fringe event. Beginning in Civic Park and processing into the Brown’s Mart Theatre, Darwin, Gathering Ground is a project that aims to give diverse groups a reason to come together and dance. Instead of the usual event that is one item after another, this project tries to integrate common themes and fosters a more collaborative approach.

Brown’s Mart 21st Birthday – Not able to get separate funding, all the Brown’s Mart programs agreed to aim their work towards this event, with overriding themes of coming of age, and rites of passage. For this event we took on  the creation of a celebratory dance event called 21 Today featuring Darwin Dance Mob adults ,kids, and older adults (Grey Panthers), David and Sarah, Johanna Clancy, and Berenice Franklin. Corrugated Iron youth dancers,
Local Troup took workshops with drummer Greg Sheehan – leading to a performance on the day.
Poster Run: exhibition hosted by 24 hour art featuring some posters Designed by Tim Newth (October 2nd). This included a performance by Sarah and David of Tim Newth’s Silent Thought

Arafura Games Opening Ceremony. This Biennial event is a celebration of our region and the many cultures that live here. It has a strong dance basis in order to create an impact on the Marrara Oval. We worked on both the pre show activities and the main event

Dance week: Raintree Park performance – April. A lunchtime performance of dance by Local Troupe and the Older adults group (Grey Panthers)

Dance Theatre

Work with Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre, Darwin Theatre Company, and other theatre groups and individuals.
Worked on The Tempest: Darwin Theatre Company directed by Patrick Mitchell

Heartbeat Of The Earth – Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre. Written by Eva Johnson and directed by Maggie Miles. Sarah Calver choreographed with Linda Bonson for this performance that was presented at the 2nd world Indigenous Youth Conference. They worked with June Mills and Allyson Arjibuk Mills, Local Larrakeyah artists.

Radio For Help: Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre play by Suzanne Spunner, directed by Maggie Myles. Choreographic assistance by David McMicken and Sarah Calver.

Remote Indigenous Community Residencies

Angurugu. Tim and David worked on this community development project

Ongoing relationships and liaising with the Lajamanu Community occur. This relationship begun in 1988 is allowing the artists to gain a deeper understanding of Warlpiri culture and how dance fits into that.

WORK IN SCHOOLS
Sarah And David continued to work at St Johns College and Casuarina Secondary College. Sarah Calver worked with St Johns College for the Beat Festival, the NT Department of Education's annual performing arts showcase. It is a large scale combined schools production led by the NT Music School with the support of the Beat Foundation, showcasing the great work of our schools. An annual and keenly anticipated event since 1979

Hosting Independant Dancers, Placements

Hellen Sky and John McCormick Showing of work INTERFACE – Centring on ideas for their new dance work – Rehearsal Room Entertainment Centre August 6th 8pm
Student Placement: Johanna Clancy, University of Western Sydney.
Indigenous traineeship: Linda Bonson. A three month training program and workshop training was developed for this Indigenous dancer.

Other

AUSDANCE BIENNIAL CONFERENCE
In January David attended the AUSDANCE Biennial Conference and the inaugural GREENMILL project. The conference was three days followed by 2 weeks of GREENMILL.

The 9th National Biennial AUSDANCE Conference was titled THE POLITICS OF DANCE POLICY, PROCESS and PRACTICE. The three days was filled with guest speakers: Dr. Peter Brinson, Julie Dyson, Nanette Hassall, Kathryn Lowe, Steven Page and an Aboriginal delegation. Panel forums and discussion groups.

It was encouraging to see that there was a strong Northern Territory contingent at this conference. Many of the issues raised as important to companies in Southern city centres were ones that we are attempting to resolve through our work at Brown's Mart. Some of these issues were:
1. The need for dance animateurs who will work with all sections of the community; especially N.E.S.B, Aboriginal, women, youth and disabilities.
2. The need to understand Aboriginal culture in its diversity and to recognise its place in the development of an Australian Cultural psyche.
3. The need to work closely with Aboriginal artists and to find ways of them working through established organisations.

GREENMILL
The GREENMILL Project was an important event. It spanned two-weeks. Each morning of the first week was devoted to talks from dance practitioners and was followed by panel discussion and open forum. Areas covered were: Design, Interactive Cultures, Composers, Dance and contemporary idioms from the Asian psyche, folkloric, choreographers, pioneers, ballroom dancing, dance and theatre, directors, computer interactive work, Butoh, "High" Australian Culture, Film Makers and Dance, Classical Ballet in a Post Modem World, Dance Degrees, Critical Writing and Dance.

During the afternoon time a core of choreographers selected from Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific would work with the key speakers from the morning, working on specific problem solving. The last session of the day was spent with open forum discussions on the day's activities and either showing of work or oral feedback from the core choreographic group.

The second week had a different structure with the core choreographic team working full time and showing work in the last session of each day. The forum discussions held during the day included; Whose National Dance Culture? Dance and Anthropology, Dance and Cultural Theory, Dance Research and Theory, Where does that highway lead to, (a look at our dance history by some leading Australian dance advocates. Conference papers from the Biennial Conference and some lecture tapes have been purchased.

Other streams to the conference were contemporary dance performance and exhibition. The following companies performed current work from their repertoire. I attended the performance sessions where the artists talked to the audience after the show. The companies are as follows: Expressions Dance Company, Body Under Ground, Outlet Dance, Star*Danger* Star, Born in a Taxi, Dance; a performance of over thirty dance artists coordinated by Jude Walton, Interactive with Hellen Sky and John McCormick, Bangarra, Leaning into the Light, (Nanette Hassall), Surface to Air.

This time recharged the batteries and enabled David to sing the praises of the work we do in the Northern Territory. It was good to confirm that the work we do here is good and that it is, in many ways, coveted by dance people down South. We must make sure that we find a way to clearly articulate what we do and why it is different and important. I see no reason why we could not present work at a conference such as this in the future, both performance and forum.

Wader Birds – Odyssey Of The Wetlands - Broome

This international arts science tour followed the northern migration of the Eastern Curlew from Aotearoa New Zealand, across to Melbourne and then Broome, Australia and to Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan, following the pathway of this endangered bird.." Meme McDonald - Artistic Director. Tim Newth was part of the core team. David was released form his Brown’s Mart work to volunteer on the Broome leg of this internationally touring work. A slide night was held in Darwin in October to share with the Darwin people this experience.

In Broome David worked closely with Beth Shelton, (choreographer and a fellow graduate), Tim Newth as a design assistant, Kate Clare as an assistant with schools' workshops, and Meme MacDonald, Director, where he was a performer in the large scale community performance event. It showed the importance of:
1. Going to the communities first before the team arrives.
2. Targeting specific groups to work on the project.
3. Working closely with local government.
David learned much about the organisation of a large-scale event. All the other artists on the Team work through their own singular art form and he was quite unique in his ability to move through the dance, drama, visual arts and performance work

In October David and Sarah attended the 2nd NT Arts Forum, ALICE SPRINGS, which allowed for further liaison with the Yipirinya School regarding a future residency.

Tasdance toured to the Northern Territory and were presenting a work by Tim Newth. Tim and David McMicken both assisted the company, travelling to Jabiru and Gunbalanya with the company, assisting in tour management, cultural liaising, and workshop facilitation. David taught their company class. The Tasdance dancers took a workshop with our Older Adults group.

David attended the Young Playwright Conference, to talk on the use of movement in theatre, especially regarding work in Aboriginal context.

A remount of Bronwyn Culcutt’s Disenchantment included choreographic work by David McMicken, who directed and dramaturged the original production.

A new image was designed by Tim Newth for the community dance program. It was used for the Land post card, letter head and T shirt and was based on the work of local sculpture Ingrid Ulpin. It is becoming more important that this program creates its own identity and brand.

1993

Brown’s Mart Community Arts Dance Development Offices: Sarah Calver, David McMicken

[Under Brown's Mart Community Arts – Executive Officer Ken Conway]