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Restless Dance Theatre
Seeing Through Darkness
Artistic Director Michelle Ryan's starting point for this film;
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“There are many facets that create the human experience. Some are vibrant flashes of joy and achievement while others are the lingering remains of pain and loss. But ultimately, what do we leave behind?
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There is an unusual beauty to the work of Georges Rouault. The imperfect form of the body and the troubled soul of the work, resonates with how people with disability can feel and how they can be perceived by others. Some may be confronted while others may see beauty in difference.”
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The I Dance Film Festival is pleased to be be showing an excerpt of this work.
Katrina McPherson, Simon Fildes and Marc Brew
Uath Lochans
A video dance by Katrina McPherson, Simon Fildes and Marc Brew
A solo dancer and a physical and visceral experience of place.
Shot on location at Uath Lochans, Glen Feshie, Invernessshire Scotland and commissioned through the Water & Glass project produced by Peter Royston, (Dance Development Perth & Kinross, Scotland)
Josh Twee
Your Different / My Same
'Your Different / My Same' by Josh Twee uses dance, text and physical theatre to explore the human condition. Together with Matthew Shilcock, Josh explores the perceptions of ability/disability and the body.
The work investigates philosophical and practical connotations of physical and internal capabilities and the blurred conceptual line between function and dysfunction. Discussing the collaboration with Matthew, Josh says, “We share lived experience. I have had many insightful and inspiring conversations with Matthew on the topic of accessibility, empowerment, awareness, and just getting it done in everyday life”.
A dance film commission by Dance Hub SA in partnership with Ausdance SA. Dance.Focus is a dance film initiative by Dance Hub SA in partnership with Ausdance SA and supported by the Department of Premier and Cabinet & Torbreck Vintners. The project is designed for Choreographers to challenge, resonate and engage with screen dance.
Imago Theatre
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Canary
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A true story, a fantasy, an allegory. Imago Theatre presents a film of Hanna Cormick's text score, Canary, that plays at the intersections of presence, absence, embodiment, cellular movement and light. In a striking meditation on the poisons we live with, Canary asks what it is for a body to be placed in harm's way to keep other bodies safe.
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Written by
Hanna Cormick
Cast
Julie Trépanier (Performer)
Creative Team
Andrew Andreoli (Director of Photography)
Cristina Cugliandro (Director)
Danna-Rae Evasiuk (Lighting Designer)
Amelia Scott (Projection Designer)
Evan Stepanian (Sound Designer)
Produced by Imago Theatre
Montreal, Canada
Text commissioned by The Arctic Cycle for Climate Change Theatre Action
First Language
Riana Head-Toussaint
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First Language by Riana Head-Toussaint is a meditation on movement; on the inherent choreography at play in wheelchair-use.
The legitimacy and illegitimacy of certain forms of movement has traditionally been dictated by the Western Dance Canon. Often, this is enacted through language; through the development of associated lexicon which further enshrines the favoured practices, as it is used to communicate and elevate them. For example, many of us can readily visualise and think of terms that describe Balletic movement; whether or not we consider ourselves to be Ballet dancers.
What happens to movement that is not recognised in this way?
As a wheelchair-user, I have a movement language that is intricate and precise. It is a part of my bodily memory, and has taken a lifetime to hone. However, there is no recognised lexicon to communicate and legitimise my wheelchair movement. If I want to share my practice with others, there is no validated language available for us to utilise.
First Language is a response to that: a concentration on the visible language in silent revolt against the erasure and non-recognition of legitimate forms of cultural expression. The video captures and archives the body, the movement, the muscle-memory: the persistence of culture through intimacy and visibility.
The audio-description track for the work represents another form of witnessing movement that is derived from disability culture; an alternate use of language that distils the previously unseen into the seen and heard.
Acknowledgement: the movement material in this work was initially developed in the context of the 2020 Keir Choreographic Award.
Landscape Diaries
Joshua Campton
Joshua Campton is a Larrakia, saltwater- crocodile man from Darwin. I’m an artist; dancer and poet.
'I like to make my poems come alive in my dance'
Breaking Up
Sue Jo Wright
The silent film, “Breaking Up” by Sue Jo Wright, explores the idiosyncratic experience of connection and communication in an era where this process is becoming increasingly impersonal through social media. With an increased reliance on English in a textual form to communicate and deliver information, many deaf people who struggle with English felt the gap between the Deaf world and the hearing world widen immeasurably. Through a cathartic self-dialogue, the Artist Sue Jo Wright explores her unique and traumatic experience of how social media is paradoxically both an incredible gift and detrimental weapon, and its part in devaluing and negating her Deaf identity, as symbolised by the “sad, long goodbye” to her own hand which is the essence of her own identity.
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Deaf Acknowledgment:
We acknowledge and respect the members of the Deaf Communities in Australia, who preserve their rich heritage, culture and our language: Auslan (Australian Sign Language). We also acknowledge our custodians of Auslan, promoting awareness, equality and access through our sign language.
To Catch a Thing in Flight
Hillary Goidell
In 2019, Deaf dancer and choreographer Anna Seymour, artist Fayen d'Evie and videographer Pippa Samaya created "Shape of an Echo", a film work that presents a gestural description of "Hauntings H M Castlemaine" 2019, a sound work by blind artist Andrew Slater that acoustically describes the corridors, cells and dungeon as Slater navigated the Old Castlemaine Gaol with his mobility cane.
We are honoured to present the premiere of a new link in this descriptive chain of works, "To Catch a Thing in Flight" 2020 by artist and photographer Hillary Goidell, an audiodescription of Seymour's movements and expressions as she performs in "Shape of an Echo."
The chain of ekphrastic works was catalysed for Dust, an artist-curatorial project of Fayen d'Evie exploring sensorial translations and inter-sensory conversation, through creative investigations of a constellation of archaic star-like prisons designed for sensory segregation and control.
"Shape of an Echo" 2019 was a finalist in the Incinerator Award for Social Change.
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