The Choreographic Centre at Gorman House Arts Centre. Public program November 24 - December 8, 1996. Bookings: 247 3103
The Minister for the Arts, Gary Humphries, will officiate at the celebration of the opening of The Choreographic Centre on Tuesday November 26 at 6.00 pm.
In the past Canberra has driven a hard bargain with modern professional dancers. Leading choreographers have been based here - Don Asker (Human Veins), Meryl Tankard, Sue Healey (Vis a Vis) - but a small town attitude, combined perhaps with a Hansonesque favouring of an ethnic European dance form (classical ballet), has put up the xenophobic barriers as if these original companies of national and international standing were somehow imposed on the local culture. They justifiably felt they never really belonged - and moved on.
In fact there has always been a local Board, chaired currently by Andrew Goledzinowski, which has now taken a new, exciting and Canberra-friendly direction. Instead of employing another artistic director with a personal creative agenda, the Board has created The Choreographic Centre, bringing dance/drama/media multi-personality Mark Gordon from the National Theatre, Melbourne, to be director.
Originally trained at Rusden College as a teacher, starting off in Drama and Media and taking advantage of the new Dance course back in the mid 70's, Gordon was selected from a remarkable field of candidates. The Board was assisted in its decision by Don Asker and Sue Street who is head of dance at Queensland University of Technology.
Gordon is best known within the dance community as the past Executive Officer of Ausdance Victoria, but he has also served as Assistant to the Artistic Director at Tasdance, on the Board of the Green Mill Dance Project, and as a teacher at Deakin University, the National Theatre Ballet School and the Dance Factory. With this history, and a sympathetic administrator in Gavin Findlay, Gordon has initiated a very significant change for professional dance, beginning with a program in three parts.
Part One is called Unchoreographed: Trotman & Morrish in Residence. Andrew Trotman presents a Dance Therapy Workshop ($10) Sunday November 24 (3 - 6 pm), and a free Research Forum November 29 (11 am). Peter Morrish offers a Squirmy Darting Workshop: computer driven dance improvisation for everybody (free) November 25 (7 pm). Together they will conduct an Improvisation Workshop ($20) November 30 and December 1, 10 am - 4 pm, and there are open rehearsals at 4 pm on November 28 and 30.
As well, you can see Trotman & Morrish perform Unchoreographed, consisting of five linked improvisations, Wednesday November 27 to Sunday December 1 (6 pm) for only $5 each day. Here is a cheap and exciting way to see, learn about and become involved in one of the recent focus points in modern dance - improvisation in performance. This will shake you out of the classical mould.
Part Two contains two Choreographic Addresses and the first of the Centre's Fellowship programs. Shirley McKechnie OAM, Patron of the Centre, speaks on Another Season, Another Shore (November 27, 8 pm) and Sandra Parker discusses The Performance of Disappearance (December 2, 7 pm). The ideas and issues embedded in dance as an art form need to be articulated - here is your opportunity.
Stephanie Burridge gets due, maybe overdue, recognition. Her Fellowship gives her six weeks in the studio, developing new work (exploring the theme "Islands") with dancers Jonathan Rees-Osborne, Patrick Harding-Irmer, Lisa Ffrench and Amalia Hordern. Titled Drafts and Sketches, this work in progress can be seen on November 29-30 and December 1 at 8 pm. This is a pilot fellowship, which will examine the process of Centre fellowships: what kinds of outcomes can be expected; how should the artist and the Centre relate to each other. An observer group of local dance artists and commentators will evaluate the pilot to help structure future fellowships.
In Part Three we see Finished Works, examining choreographic achievement over three decades. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman performs her own work from the 1970's - showing how the artistic context, including the artist herself, has changed. Fiona Cullen dances work by Helen Herbertson from the 1980's. Brett Daffy presents a re-working of his first professional piece from earlier in the 1990's. Helen Herbertson will show her current solo work; while Paul Shembri will dance a piece by Kim Vincs created in October 1996. You can see open rehearsals on December 2 (8 pm) and 3 (4 pm and 8 pm) with a student preview on December 4 (8 pm), and the final performances ($10) on December 5 - 6 (8 pm), December 7 (2 pm and 8 pm) and December 8 (2 pm and 5 pm).
If you are putting all this in your diary, you'll realise that the Choreographic Centre is providing a remarkably cheap and fascinating festival of dance for two weeks. Mark Gordon makes it abundantly clear that his task is a kind of healing process, designed to bring together the local and out-of-town professionals for the benefit of Canberra audiences and students - and ultimately as a centre of excellence in the national scene. Funding for the current program is 50/50 Australia Council and ACT Cultural Council - and for the future needs not only a similar level of support as the previous companies received from government but active support from local people as audiences, participants and sponsors.
The concept of the Centre is to see modern dance (post post-modern) as we see multiculturalism. Each form of dance is valid in its own right, from "release dance", through post-modern dance, cross-cultural forms, jazz ballet, to modern ballet and classical ballet; not excluding ethnic and folk dance. You can see Gordon's background in Ausdance shining through: no longer is modern dance essentially a line of progressive development from Americans like Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and their offspring all around the world: be eclectic, says Mark Gordon.
Sally Bane wrote in 1980 "Modern dance identifies itself as aesthetic" - as opposed to being merely entertaining. The work of Canberra's new research and development centre in dance - the Choreographic Centre - is certainly focussed on the aesthetic, in the knowledge that this means entertainment of the most satisfying kind. The door of the Centre is literally always open to new ways; dance here is most surely not elitist or exclusivist: accessibility is the keynote. This is the excitement of this new beginning in Canberra dance: the marriage of the educative, the innovative and the entertaining at the fully professional level.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday 11 November 1996
Wednesday 6 November 1996
1996: Sanctimony by Joe Woodward
Sanctimony written and directed by Joe Woodward. Music by Dirk Zeylmans and Jeff Evans. The Street Theatre Studio November 6 - 10 and 12 - 16, 1996, 6.30 and/or 9.30 pm. Professional.
This is a personal and public commentary by Joe Woodward designed to expose the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Public Service. The manic stress-related breakdown of Bede Rashamon, knowing the truth of the inner sanctum of the Department of Spiritual Affirmation and doubting the reality of his role as Chief Overseer, is represented wonderfully in a jazz/rap fusion break dance - a mimed culmination of Woodward's acting skills.
Bede is "replaced by a younger woman", Chess Reason, played by Melinda Donnell with exactly the right degree of cold calculation. She is a singer of range and power; while Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven fades expertly in and out of a warm blues saxophone and the black role of Predator Kite, playing the Perseus myth - "the bird pecking at my torso, ripping into my innards". Chess has reached the bureaucratic peak because she can talk, but can she survive the secret knowledge - the real truth - known only to the inner circle?
Sanctimony is an exciting expressionistic work - humorous, satirical and sad. It's a script which still needs trimming, partly because it deals with many layers of ideas and the thread attenuates sometimes; and partly because the dramatic form needs clarifying, especially in the first half. It is a brave and worthwhile play because of the risks Woodward has taken. I saw the first night of new experimental theatre, mixing live acting, band and singer, with live and recorded video, a computer whose typist was not allowed to see the secret material on the screen, and brief but significant audience participation.
No wonder the focus was fuzzy for a while, but in the end the message comes through: "Be honest with yourself, lest others be honest for you." Even I come in for a slice from the razor gang: "Who are these critics - these self-appointed guardians of our lives?" Well, this critic says "Go and see for yourself. You'll arrive sanctimonious, but you'll leave a better person." After all what more could you ask from good theatre?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is a personal and public commentary by Joe Woodward designed to expose the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Public Service. The manic stress-related breakdown of Bede Rashamon, knowing the truth of the inner sanctum of the Department of Spiritual Affirmation and doubting the reality of his role as Chief Overseer, is represented wonderfully in a jazz/rap fusion break dance - a mimed culmination of Woodward's acting skills.
Bede is "replaced by a younger woman", Chess Reason, played by Melinda Donnell with exactly the right degree of cold calculation. She is a singer of range and power; while Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven fades expertly in and out of a warm blues saxophone and the black role of Predator Kite, playing the Perseus myth - "the bird pecking at my torso, ripping into my innards". Chess has reached the bureaucratic peak because she can talk, but can she survive the secret knowledge - the real truth - known only to the inner circle?
Sanctimony is an exciting expressionistic work - humorous, satirical and sad. It's a script which still needs trimming, partly because it deals with many layers of ideas and the thread attenuates sometimes; and partly because the dramatic form needs clarifying, especially in the first half. It is a brave and worthwhile play because of the risks Woodward has taken. I saw the first night of new experimental theatre, mixing live acting, band and singer, with live and recorded video, a computer whose typist was not allowed to see the secret material on the screen, and brief but significant audience participation.
No wonder the focus was fuzzy for a while, but in the end the message comes through: "Be honest with yourself, lest others be honest for you." Even I come in for a slice from the razor gang: "Who are these critics - these self-appointed guardians of our lives?" Well, this critic says "Go and see for yourself. You'll arrive sanctimonious, but you'll leave a better person." After all what more could you ask from good theatre?
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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