Tracks Dance Studio, Frog Hollow Centre for the Arts, Darwin City

October 2016 – March 2017

The 2016/17 Space Time studio residency program culminated in a showing of work-in-progress for a small, invited audience. Held in the Tracks studio, the showing was an opportunity for studio residents to present their physical ideas, explorations and processes, as well as engage in critical discussion with peers, friends, family and Tracks staff. Two of this years residents were unable to attend the showing but instead presented video footage from their residency periods. Studio Residency Showing, Saturday March 25, 2017

Residents

Kate Mornane - In Hand

Concept: Kate Mornane

Performers and Collaborators: Kate Mornane, Jenelle Saunders, Tara Schmidt

Film: Kate Mornane and Dan Hartney

Music: Cascades by Goldmund; Sleeping Lotus by Joep Beving; Wallpaper by Woo

Beautiful, useful, sensory and strange, our hands connect us with our physical world. This piece was an exploration of communication, cooperation, emotion, memory and touch through hands. The piece was partly improvised to reflect a collective awareness of our hands and choreographed together to express our individual interpretation of the themes.

Felicity Wardle

Documentation of creative process, and music video

As a Tracks studio resident, my purpose was threefold. Firstly, it was an opportunity for unbridled play time, to be in the creative flow and in the creative process. It was a time to 'go wild'. I wanted to explore the performance mediums of masked contemporary dance and hula hoop dance without an agenda, without a product and without an audience. During this process, ideas emerged and connections were made between the two styles. It was also a lovely reminder of the childlike joy I feel when immersed in these creative art forms. Secondly, during the residency time, I had an external project coinciding, which was filming a music video in the Humpty Doo swamp, with performers from Team Awkward and Nibbles Theatre. I was inspired for some footage to be filmed in the Tracks studio. Cinematographer Ben Speare and I worked together over a session, filming and photographing masked contemporary dance for the music video. With full creative license on the music video we could take tangents, and let things get strange and weird and unexpected. Lastly, my studio time preceded my involvement in a stage performance at the Woodford Folk Festival 2016/17. With script in hand, I could block out and rehearse my role as a puppeteer. Without the Bankaru puppets present, this became an interesting movement practice in and of itself. I found my time in the studio rewarding and revealing and I am very grateful for the opportunity provided by Tracks.

Venaska Cheliah

Documentation of creative process

Darryl Butler - Echoes and Dreams

Concept and choreography: Darryl Butler 
Performers: Darryl Butler, David McMicken
Music: A soundtrack compiled by Darryl Butler from the sounds of running water, the call of Bell Birds, original electronic music and spoken word by Darryl, together with excerpts from “Echoes “by Pink Floyd and Piano Concerto No 1 by Chopin

The intent of the work is an exploration of the influence of connections and of entanglements from our younger lives on our current self. The concept is derived from a consideration of the ageing process and our limited ability to appreciate the current influence of our personal history. Who are we and how did we become who we are?

In this duet the dancers move sometimes using body to body contact and sometimes moving connected by a rope. Both are metaphors for levels of awareness and for other less tangible influences. Echoes and dreams, emotions, actions and thoughts that reach in both directions across the time barriers of our advancing age.

Natalie Hafsteins - Untitled

My time in the Residency Program was filled with moments of comfort, unease, play and break throughs. I designed specific tasks to challenge my movement vocabulary. I began with words to spark off ideas and used these phrases to challenge my use of levels and size to create contrast. When piecing each phrase together I recorded my work to refine the varying movement phrases from high to low, small to large. Once each phrase was connected I added two separate pieces of music to show further contrast between the beginning and the end of my piece.
The studio residency program was a place of identification, refinement and reflection pushing boundaries within the creative process.

Jenelle Saunders - Dance Mongers

Collaborators and performers: Jenelle Saunders, Kelly Beneforti

Assistants: Kate Mornane, Tara Schmidt
Music: The Marriage of Figaro Duettino-Sull'aria; Ghosthack by Yoko Kanno

Dance Mongers’ aim was to absorb our moving selves within a curious and creative play space, where we were free to explore and follow a number of movement ideas to different stages of fruition. Our desire to have access to a solid weeklong residency allowed us to do just this.

As Dance Mongers we began our movement expeditions from a base list of concepts that we were initially drawn to.  These were: Play, Enjoy, Connect, Sensory and Make. 
We sought to create and immerse ourselves in dance that connected us, that we clearly enjoyed (and that came from joy- instigated memories), that stemmed from each of us but became something new entirely in the process, and that drew from a wide range of input, including the five senses.

We wanted our experiences to be intrinsically connective, immersive, accessible to (future) audiences, and personally satisfying as dance artists. We played with the use of tactile input and obstacles such as card board boxes, pot plants and cushions to inform and impact movement as blindfolded dancers. We mindfully ate and translated that sensory information into our bodies. We recalled moments of utter joy and made a duet. We used a range of music to accompany and shape our dancing. We dove into large piles of pillows just for the fun of it. We wore sparkly costumes, married yoga to heavy metal music and danced ‘seriously’ and ‘not so seriously’. We watched Beyonce’s full visual album ‘Lemonade’ and felt her moxy, vulnerability, artistry. We engaged in ‘authentic movement’ tasks to tap into our quiet inner workings and raise them to our epidermal surface levels.

The wares we offered at the Tracks Studio Residency showing on Saturday 25th March, included a sensory based experience for the invited guests. This involved a guided moment where we asked our audience to both relax, trust us with what we hoped would be a positive experience, and thereby accept our offerings of sound, smell, taste and touch (Italian opera, essential oil laced spritzing, slow blueberry eating, bubbly sipping and hot cloth application). We then asked them to in turn impact our own blindfolded dancing with tactile input – to shape, inhibit and inspire our movement.  To conclude our segment, we showed a few video excerpts of the tasks and ideas we had explored during our residency.

Dance Mongers is in its infant stage and intends to build on its first round of peddling in the near future.

Government Partners

Tracks Inc is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; and is proudly sponsored by the Northern Territory Government.

Tracks 2017

Artistic Co-Directors: David McMicken and Tim Newth
General Manager: Agnès Michelet
Administrator: Clancy Breasley
Production Manager: Mathew McHugh
Dance Animateur: Kelly Beneforti
Bookkeeper: Noya Chong Wah

Committee Members: Mary Durack (Chairperson), Glenn Bernardin (Treasurer), Michael Grant, David Taylor, Ken Conway, Stephanie Cvirn, Venaska Cheliah. David McMicken, Tim Newth, Agnès Michelet (Ex-Officio Members)

Public Fund Trustees: Rev. Steve Orme, Dr Anita Toth, Ippei Okazaki

Patron: His Honour, The Honourable John Hardy OAM, Administrator of the Northern Territory