MIND THE GAP
A partnership with Tasdance
2019 South Australian Recipient – Dianne Reid
From 2004-2006 Dianne was Artistic Director of Dancehouse, Melbourne’s centre for independent contemporary dance, during which time she introduced the Grad Lab, Dance Path, Dance Flicks and The Joker seasons. She also secured additional support for the organisation through the Rotary Youth Arts Project (Rotary Clubs, City of Yarra and VicHealth) and triennial funding from the Australia Council.
Since 2006 Dianne has been involved in a number of collaborative projects, interstate and internationally. In 2006/7 she choreographed the full-length work “Unfixed” during her Asialink residency in India. She has returned to India to teach and collaborate with Mallika Sarabhai and the Darpana company regularly since then. Another recurring collaboration with Swedish dancer/choreographer Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt began with a residency at Ricklundgarden in Lapland, Sweden, in 2009 also collaborating with Japanese dancer Heidi S. Durning to create the work “Wolfcoffee.”
Dianne has worked with a number of differently-abled artists since 2010, creating short films for Weave Movement Theatre, Uberdance/Art of Difference Festival, and Melinda Smith, a dance artist living with cerebral palsy. Melinda and Dianne have an ongoing shared improvisational practice, have performed together in India (2011 & 12) and Sweden (2012) and the full-length performance “Unbecoming” at the 2014 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
In 2012 Dianne received high acclaim for her solo work “Dance Interrogations” at both the Adelaide Fringe (nominated for Best Dance Award) and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. Most recently Dianne and Melinda Smith received Australia Council and Creative Victoria funding to continue their collaboration developing their duet work which formed part of her doctoral research “Dance Interrogations” for Deakin University. “Dance Interrogations 2016” was presented at the Footscray Community Arts Centre as part of their Call to Create initiative, and at the inaugural Salamanca Moves contemporary dance festival in Hobart, Tasmania, where it won the A.W.A.R.D. show to return in 2017 as part of the Ten Days on the Island Festival.
Images: Dianne Reid – Mind the Gap 2019
Dianne’s Project
“Yesterday’s Skeleton—a self portrait
—Here lies a burden lifted, under a blanket of fables”
My project would focus on developing recorded materials for a documentary/bio pic—a physical etching on dance as a life practice and life as a dance/screen practice. Through an interrogation of my current practice and an historical unpacking of my dance trajectory, I hope to bring issues of body, sustain/ability, independence and community cooperation to the surface.
Over the week I would gather materials of self-portraiture—filming of scored physical practice, audio recordings of interview (questions gathered from previous collaborators and/or local community), traversal of local landscape as camera/viewer, interactions between live body and projected imagery. These materials could be edited into a screendance or “bio pic”, or inform a future live work, or develop into a community project.
I would invite local community to engage with the process via participation in a screendance & improvisation workshop. This workshop introduces “screendance” as a way to re-imagine and hold onto our dancing. It takes the dance to new locations, enables new perspectives on the body, while simultaneously becoming kinesthetic information entering the body and the imaginative vocabulary. Drawing on visual, tactile and text-based scores to develop improvisational scores and choreographic materials, participants will also experiment with the notion of ‘active witnessing’—of moving through the action as audience/viewer, in duet with the dancer. In this way participants are introduced to the notion of the duet of screendance: the relationship of the moving camera (viewer) and the moving body.
For the end of the week outcome, I would present an installation of recorded and live materials—a play between performance and projection as a live edit, and opportunities for audience interaction and reflections in the form of live interviews and written exchanges.
2019 Tasmanian Recipient – Benjamin Allen
Benjamin Allen has a diverse movement background; teaching, practicing and facilitating movement within Hip Hop, parkour, freerunning, contemporary, tricking, hand balancing and tumbling.
His artistic practice spans across performance, sound and design.
Benjamin began his training under the guidance of Beat Militia Crew, Van Diemen Tricking Legion, Canberra Parkour, DRILL, The Space and Yellow Wheel. Currently he is studying a Bachelor of Environmental Design, majoring in Architecture, alongside a Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania.
The Mind the Gap Residency will be an opportunity to continue development of his mapping as a diagnostic and choreographic tool, dance performance practices (choreographic and technical), alongside research contrasting our built environments vestigial structures, and subversive embodied practices.