LINK Dance Company, WAAPA’s graduate dance company, will be presenting a triple bill entitled “The Body Politic” in Perth, before heading on tour to France.
The program features Chasing Breath, by visiting Israeli choreographer Niv Marinberg, Carnivale.3, by Co3 Australia Artistic Director Raewyn Hill and Shrink, by WAAPA graduate Scott Elstermann, the first Australian to win a prestigious Pina Bausch Fellowship.
Marinberg’s Chasing Breath explores how time is perceived and the way emotion – and breath – affects it. Has worked as rehearsal director and tour manager for Israeli dance company L-E-V. He has taught around the world at dance academies and companies, and been an assistant choreographer with StaatsOper Berlin, Royal Danish Opera, Banch National Compania de Chile, Luzern Theater, Israeli Opera House and Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company.
Carnivale.3, by Raewyn Hill, fuses images of bull-fighting with the trance-like pandemonium of the Dancing Plague that hit France in 1518, and is set to an original score by Hill’s long-time collaborator Eden Mulholland. “Carnivale.3 intentionally tests the endurance of the performers in order to generate a powerful internal community,” explains Hill. “The work challenges the dancers to negotiate the tight spaces between them and to balance a strong sense of group with an assertion of their own identity.”
Rounding off the program is Shrink, choreographed by Scott Elstermann to original music by WAAPA lecturer Michael Terren. “The piece examines ideas of power, autonomy and conformity through a flexible and diminishing space,” says Elstermann. Dance Australia caught up with Elstermann whilst he was completing his Pina Bausch Fellowship and you can read that interview here.
“The Body Politic” plays the Geoff Gibbs Theatre at WAAPA, May 22-25.