Be Your Self all over!
Australian Dance Theatre is going on the road throughout August with Garry Stewart’s global tour-de-force, Be Your Self. This highly physical work transforms the ADT dancers into powerful and emotional entities that question the very essence of our being -- what makes you, you?
Be Your Self examines how the body is central to our identity and that our notion of the ‘self’ is indeed located in our bodies. Our emotions, moods and psychological states are just as much a component of our physical reality as any other bodily function including our heartbeat or respiration.
“In thinking about the question ‘who am I?’ the body is the most appropriate place to start,” explains Stewart, ADT's artistic director.
“It’s not just a nebulous concept we carry around in our heads. The discussion of selfhood and identity is so relevant to dance and Be Your Self cross pollinates ideas from philosophy, neuroscience and psychology into an entertaining and action packed whole.”
Since its 2010 premiere, Be Your Self has toured extensively overseas as well as to Sydney, Perth and a number of Australian regional venues, but it has never been to Melbourne.
In creating the piece, Stewart and the dancers spent a day with Professor Ian Gibbons former Professor of Physiology at Flinders University examining preserved cadavers at the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide. They also underwent a period of Buddhist meditation on the nature of the self.
Be Your Self season opens in Melbourne at the Sumner Theatre in Southbank and runs from August 2 to 5. It then embarks on a regional tour of Be Your Self Redux, a reduced-scale version of the work, across Australia, covering Townsville, Lismore, Toowoomba, Parramatta in Sydney, Frankston (Melbourne) and Mildura.
Dates: Wednesday 2 – Saturday 5 August 2017 - The Sumner, Southbank Theatre Melbourne
'BE YOUR SELF (REDUX)' - NATIONAL TOUR
Tuesday 15 August:Townsville Civic Theatre, Townsville (Qld)
Friday 18: Saturday 19 August - Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) – Lismore (NSW)
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Thursday 24 August: Empire Theatre – Toowoomba (Qld)
Saturday 2 September: Riverside Theatres – Parramatta (NSW)
Friday 8 September: Frankston Arts Centre – Frankston (Vic)
Tuesday 12 September: Mildura Arts Centre – Mildura (Vic)
Pictured: Kimball Wong photographed by CHRIS HERZFELD.