Australian Dance Theatre is presenting a program that brings together local and international choreographers for its next season at the Odeon Theatre in Adelaide.
Under the banner title "Convergence" will be a five short works, two by local artists and three by winners of the International Choreographic Competition (ICC) in Hannover in Germany.
Usually each year ADT’s International Centre for Choreography (ICC), with support from the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, hosts the annual ICC scholarship winner in Adelaide for a three-week artistic residency sometime during the 12 months following their win. Because of travel restrictions, this year the decision was made to remount the winning works on the ADT dancers for an exclusive Adelaide-based season. The choreographers have been working with the dancers via Zoom, and will also “attend” opening night of the Convergence season via Zoom.
The three works are O, by 2018 winner, German-born Philippe Kratz, an exploration of the concept of eternal life and the blurred lines between artificial intelligence and the human condition; Road, by the 2019 winner, South Africa’s Oscar Buthelezi, which considers the various pathways, meeting points, challenges and final destinations we choose as we make our way through life; and Trial, from 2020 Hannover recipient Tu Hoang, which "uses the power of two dancers and the Eastern influences of martial art and tai chi to consider concepts of proximity and distance, the past and the present". Hoang hails from Vietnam.
The local creations comprise Immerse, by ADT’s 2021 Associate Artist, Adrianne Semmens, which draws on Semmens’s identity as a descendent of the Barkindji people of NSW. Semmens is ADT’s Associate Associate this year, a position supported by the Tanja Liedtke Foundation with a $20,000 stipend. The other work is Iti, choreographed by well-known choreographer Gina Rings and presented by the South Australian First Nations Dance Collective.
Convergence runs from May 5 to 8.
More: here.
Sign up to our e-news here. It's free!