This article was first published by Ausdance WA, Dancewest magazine.
Future
Landings
Annette Carmichael writes about the impact of
Ausdance WA’s regional program, Future Landings 2013.
Wheel of Fortunes
It’s a giant
Wheat Bin and the wind is howling through it.
Jason Thelwell, our intrepid Production Manager is calling for rope,
lots of it, to stablise the lighting bars before he hoists them up into this
massive space.
I’m standing in the Jerdacuttup Wheat Bin,
the most remote destination in Ausdance WA’s Future Landings 2013 season. Future Landings is a
groundbreaking contemporary dance initiative designed to bring dance and
cultural experiences to remote Western Australia. It presents a unique opportunity for
communities in isolated locations to work with regional and Perth
choreographers, artists and filmmakers to create large scale performances each
unique to their town and with each cast made up entirely of locals.
Future
Landings 2013 includes projects in Broome, Karratha and the Shire of
Ravensthorpe which includes Jerdacuttup.
This thirty-six year old Wheat Bin is an icon of the Wheatbelt acting as
a reminder to the community of the significance of good and bad harvests. Its immense size allowed it to hold 31,533
tons of wheat back in 1999, but it’s empty now, so we are going to fill it with
dance, story and film to create Wheel of Fortunes.
Wheel of Fortunes has been created by Perth choreographer
Aimee Smith with Denmark-based writing facilitator Nicola-Jane le Breton and
the communities of Hopetoun, Ravensthorpe and Jerdacuttup. The performance explores the concepts of
richness and loss in these communities.
The region
has a long and deep history of growth and demise, shaped largely by the ebbs
and flows of both the mining and farming industries as well as its unique geographic
isolation. These places are filled with stories of opportunity and risk, of
success and failure, of joy and sadness.
Through working closely with the writers of the towns, and integrating
text with the performance, the communities’ cycles of fortunes, and
misfortunes, and the resilience that has blossomed through it all, are
revealed.
In the days leading up to the performance I
was often told by participants how amazed they were by Aimee’s calm, patient
guidance. It was a reciprocal admiration
as Aimee wrote for the local newspaper:
Every
time I come to this community I'm blown away by the generosity I'm shown and
the unbelievable Duracell battery energy that seems to run the creative
community in this town. The literature that emerged during the community
writing sessions really moved me and brought some incredible stories of
hardship, endurance, and joy to the surface.
Local
filmmaker, Amber Perryman has created a series of films that evoke the
environment, the rain, the history.
These films are projected inside the Wheat Bin and the corrugated iron
textures the film while local voices speak local memories.
The success of this project is a credit to
the Ravensthorpe Regional Arts Council who were extraordinary partners,
co-presenting the project and providing a richness of skill, networks and
practical support. Project Co-ordinator, Ainsley Foulds
said the Arts Council were keen to be involved for a number of reasons:
The
RRAC wanted to
provide the community with the opportunity to engage in an innovative and
stimulating project that is enjoyable, inspiring and challenging. We also wanted to provide local artists and
arts workers with professional development in areas such as writing,
choreography, filmmaking and project management under the mentorship of
experienced professionals. Wheel of
Fortunes was our chance to gain valuable insight into the local interest, and
the potential for, including contemporary dance into future programs - an art
form which the RRAC has little previous experience with. Ultimately we wanted to promote a sense of
belonging and community cohesion by engaging in a large scale collaborative
project that embraces community life and cultural identity.
On Saturday
12 October, the buses rolled in from all over the district bringing 300 people
to witness a performance that could only be made here, about these people and
their lives. Performed by nineteen people,
aged 13 – 70 years the show also included a dog, four bikes, a spinning wheel
and an impressive and strongly secured lighting rig!
Men of the Red Earth
The need for
lots of rope was an ongoing theme in this years Future Landings. Men of
the Red Earth, was the title of our project in the Pilbara that included
performances by 7 local men in two locations, Point Samson and Karratha for the
Red Earth Arts Festival in September.
This
performance culminated in a man abseiling head first from a crane to the stage,
then ascending again with another dancer for an ironic aerial ballet - a little dig at the untrue stereotype that ‘footy
players in tutus’ was the extent of men dancing in the Pilbara.
Overturning
stereotypes was what this project was all about. The dancers who came from a range of
backgrounds - tradesmen, managers, scientists and a drag queen, wanted to show
that there was more to being a bloke in the Pilbara than just drinking beer.
The
performance opened with a film by local artist Tangiora Hinaki featuring Xena, the
drag queen, simply walking along the highway, the vision is interrupted by a
series of text messages, all actually received by participants, that express
’surprise’ (but in more colourful language) at the idea of men dancing.
Karratha
choreographer Megan Wood-Hill and her
mentor, Perth-based Jacob Lehrer have facilitated an empowering creative
process that embraced the challenges and celebrated the sheer fun of being a
man of the Pilbara.
Local
businesses got behind the project with all manner of heavy equipment being
provided free like buses, the crane and a donga used for the set. The project attracted extensive media
interest with local, state and national media running stories.
In an
interview on ABC regional radio one project participant, Fonda, described how
the Men of the Red Earth project had
embraced him fully, making space for both Fonda and Xena (his drag queen
persona). When asked by the reporter
what he had got out of the project Fonda said, “new friends and a sense of belonging and everyone in that dance group
has pushed their boundaries and really, really come together. It is one of the most amazing things I have
ever been a part of.”
Megan
Wood-Hill grew up in Karratha and has
worked as a dance teacher and performer in South Korea, Japan and
Australia. Future Landings provided her with
a chance to choreograph in new ways:
The
idea of working with men was unknown and exciting. I was inspired by the chance to work with
male physicality, strength and a higher appetite for risk than I had
experienced before.
What’s
been really interesting is watching how the group has evolved. Some knew each other before and some are new
and I have seen them embrace each other.
It’s a shared and unique journey and strong bonds have been formed very
quickly.
Future Landings is about demystifying
contemporary dance. In these projects
contemporary dance makes sense to regional audiences because it is used to
explore issues important to the community.
It’s a style of dance that can enfold the contradictions, diverse
opinions and simple unknowns that are part of life in regional Western
Australia.
With ongoing funding from both State and
Australian Governments, we look forward to another Future Landings season in
2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment