Day 3 – Speak Local

shoesandspices

WeiZen Ho and Alan Schacher

For this performance we use spices for their references to kitchen, tradition, trade, for their colours and scents. For WeiZen the history of the Dutch East India Company, trading through The Straits of Melaka, is tied to a history of colonisation and of the Chinese Diaspora.

 Also shoes, which open onto so many cultural markers and taboos. Alan’s references include the artists Wolfgang Laib, Anish Kapoor, Franko B, Doris Salcedo, and holocaust memorials in Washington and Budapest.

Alan and WeiZen live and work an intercultural life, WeiZen is a Malaysian-born Chinese and Alan is an Australian-born Jew. They have performed across Asia including Melaka Arts and Performance Festival, Malaysia and The Arts Island Festival and Undisclosed Territory in Indonesia. They collaborate in site-specific improvisational renditions of their process, as well on Sound Bites Body, an improvisational event WeiZen curates in The Blue Mountains. They recently completed the first stage of Unappeased, a project examining insatiability through the lens of the Hungry Ghost metaphor.

Paschal Daantos Berry

The presentation will be about developing intercultural works through interdisciplinary processes. Framing the talk around a ten year collaborative partnership with Manila-based artists from Anino Shadowplay Collective, performer Valerie Berry and artist/dramaturg Deborah Pollard.  The presentation will be largely informed by my practice of traversing the interdependent worlds of dramaturgy, theatre and dance making, and currently curating for Blacktown Arts Centre.  Perhaps suggesting that, this sense of multiplicity is what keeps me immersed in intercultural works.

Paschal Daantos Berry is performance maker, writer, curator and dramaturg whose practice is focused on interdisciplinary, cross cultural and collaborative processes. He has worked for Urban Theatre Projects (UTP), Radio National (ABC), Griffin Theatre, the Australian Choreographic Centre and Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble, Belvoir Asian Theatre Festival, Performance Space, Blacktown Arts Centre, ATYP, Canberra Youth Theatre and NORPA. 

Naayika’

Aruna Gandhi and Anisha Thomas

A collaborative work in progress featuring the Indian-classical dance style of Bharatanatyam accompanied by piano. ‘Naayika’(meaning the heroine in Sanskrit) tells the story of a woman who experiences a myriad of emotions in relation to her lover – love, distress, hope, disappointment, strength, confusion, anger and compassion and ultimately finds her happiness within her own self.

Through this performance we are exploring ways of integrating and blending two distinct artistic styles – Indian classical dance and the Western classical music. We’re looking at how the two art forms inspire and influence each other…. How the Indian traditional dance movements, rhythm, gestures and facial expressions inspire and respond to the western classical sounds of the piano….  

Raghav Handa

The Shifter, which explores the concept of “Shape-shifting” or transformation – a common theme in many indigenous cultures that involves a change in the form, shape or character of a person to another person or an animal. This work is currently in development and the original research phase was conducted in far north Queensland with my cultural guide, Marilyn Miller. In subsequent developments, I explored this concept through 3D motion capture technology and set design. 

Raghav is an Australian choreographer and performer of Indian heritage with training in modern and Indigenous contemporary dance. In 2012, he choreographed KumKum PACT in Sydney and explored time manipulation using rhythmical movement patterns. His choreographic practice was supported in 2013 through: Kick Start (Next Wave), Ausdance NSW, Research Residency (Critical Path) and JUMP (Australia Council for the Arts). In 2014-15, Raghav choreographed and performed Tukre’ at Dancehouse in Melbourne (Next Wave Festival), Metro Arts in Brisbane and at the Parramatta Riverside Theatres in Sydney (FORM dance). Raghav continues to develop his next solo work The Shifter, and his new ensemble work through Strut Dance SEED residency in Perth.

Liz Lea

Liz Lea will give a short presentation of a Ruth St Denis solo from 1906 followed by a showing of a work in progress – Star Struck – a new cross cultural company work looking to the skies for inspiration, guidance and permission. Included is a film by Sean Goebel.

“… reconnecting with historical cross-cultural work and meeting other younger artists in the wider cross-cultural field.” – Liz Lea