Since 2009, Dances with Dogs has been approved by the Australian National Kennel Council as an official sport in Australia. That's right; dog owners perform fully themed, costumed and choreographed dance numbers to music with their canine counterparts. Presented as part of Next Wave, Canine Choreography takes a number of dog owners and their pets and has them recreating award winning Dances with Dogs routines while highlighting the relationships and bonds we share with dogs.
Creator Danielle Reynolds interviews a number of dog owners, including some from the Dances with Dogs community. There is a slight Best In Show mockumentary feel throughout as people gush over their pets and the seriousness in which competitive dog dancing is discussed. These moments prove to be the most entertaining and unfortunately this is where the problem with Canine Choreography lies.
As you enter Jupiter Orbiting, creator and performer Joshua Pether is nervously decorating a table with Lego blocks, coloured paper and animal figurines. It feels like we are watching the preparation of a child's party, however with the rest of the stage empty and dark, there is trepidation in the air.
Using a science fiction narrative, this performative piece explores childhood trauma and grief, which Pether juxtaposes with scenes that are equally representative of innocence and naivety. From a distance, the coloured pieces of paper used at the beginning of the show resemble crushed origami cranes, a symbol of hope.
There's even contradiction in its title, alluding to the 12 years it takes for Jupiter to complete its orbital period. This could easily
be the age that Pether is portraying, one that is full of liveliness
and zest, yet the planet itself is desolate and void of any life.
There aren’t many women in the world who can say they’ve never thought – or been asked
- about having children. Regardless of the answer, it is a question that
ultimately needs to be answered with the ramifications of that choice coming
into effect for the rest of their lives. Kerensa Diball and Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez
are two friends, one is a mother and one is not, and in Baby Cake, they look at what it means to be a woman and a mother,
with a little help along the way.
Ng-Rodriguez has a 2-year-old son, Mori and throughout the show she
discusses the changes in her life, particularly in how she balances this with her
career as an art maker and the compromises she has had to make to continue
working while being a mother. On the other side of the spectrum, Diball has no
children, but she did acquire a parasite called blastocystis hominis after
eating some raw goat’s cheese in Turkey so she has some idea on what’s it like to
be a mother.
Selina Thompson is a 28-year-old black woman who lives in Birmingham. But being a woman
of colour with ancestry from Jamaica and Montserrat, when asked where
she’s from, the UK is often not considered an acceptable answer. To explore her diasporic identity, Thompson bought a ticket on a cargo ship and retraced
one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle, going from the UK to
Ghana to Jamaica, and then back.
In salt., Thompson poetically recalls this experience with
the audience while reminding us of the irreparable damage colonialism has had on her ancestors and how this grief will be felt for generations to come. Thompson also ties in her own
personal encounters with racism in all its forms, and we hang off her every word as she goes trough these incidents, reinforcing the fact that despite the passing of time, attitudes have changed very little.
Transgender bodies, identity and environment serve as the focus of
Embittered Swish's new work with their Next Wave Festival show, Estrogenesis. Taking on a technology themed
approach to gender, the performance art piece explores what happens when you
alter the 'hardware' of gender and what the ramifications of such an
act are.
Performed by Mossy 333, Romy Fox, Bobuq Sayed and Mick Klepner Roe, we
witness several scenes that delve into what it is to be trans through a variety
of art mediums including spoken word, music and dance. There are some
interesting issues and themes raised, including Sayed’s spoken word on the
trans body and the differences that exist within the trans community.
Using Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Shadow – a Parable as its inspiration, experimental theatre artist and stage designer House of Vnholy's SEER is an immersive exploration of darkness and silence and a study on being alone. Performed as part of the Next Wave Festival, this site-specific show at the Darebin Arts Centre combines ritual and poetry to encourage us to consider not only our life and our death but also the part in between.
The most powerful part of SEER takes place inside the main theatre of the Darebin Arts
Centre where you took a seat in a specially designed booth facing
the stage. There was something very eerie about being the only
person in a theatre that can seat almost 400 people. I constantly felt like figures were emerging from the stage, standing up from the seats and staring at me through the darkness. No doubt the haunting soundscape designed by Jannah Quill contributed to this disorientation, and along with the light images being projected onto the stage, I was continually questioning if I was experiencing a painful death or an uplifting rebirth.
Imagine having a five-course meal with a group of strangers, where you must democratically vote on all the ingredients that will be used. What if someone is vegetarian or has allergies to pineapple? Or simply doesn't like spicy food? Presented as part of Next Wave Festival, Counterpilot's Crunch Time has its participants doing just that, and as a result, leaves them thinking about much more than just their food choices.
Co-founded by Sandra
Carluccio and Nathan Sibthorpe, Counterpilot's performative dinner party sits us
around a table and through the use of some interactive tools, we vote on each ingredient that our guest chef will prepare in a kitchen that is a few metres away from where we dine. The chefs for each session are public figures in the arts world and include Georgie Meagher, the Director and CEO of Next Wave, and Simon Abrahams, the Artistic Director of Melbourne Fringe. In our session, we are treated to the culinary expertise of Wesley Enoch, the Artistic Director of Sydney Festival.
