Dance as Document: how does your body build an image?
22-24 February 2024, 7-9.30pm, The Performance Arcade, Wellington, Aotearoa
Choreographer Amaara Raheem is looking to work with performers and visual artists to participate in ‘Dance as Document’ - a site responsive performance event - on Wellington’s waterfront, as part of The Performance Arcade on Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 February 2024, 7-9.30pm.
Dance as Document invites a collective practice of composing together with all the forces present in Wellington’s waterfront, by bringing together six practitioners interested in site-responsive performance to explore the question: how does your body build an image?
Bringing together six diverse practitioners interested in site-responsive performance, Amaara will offer a movement / performance ‘score’ each day and then we’ll work as a group to activate it, at a specific site, working with all the forces (visible and invisible) in Wellington’s harbour. Each score is specific and has certain details and orientations but broadly they all invite you to generate movement sequences that are improvised; closely attend to the movement of another’s body; map it onto your own; and prioritise compositions that reveal space and place. This performance doesn’t ask you to learn any dance ‘steps’ but it does invite you to work with movement repetition, - that includes variation and difference - and to engage with experimental writing and documentation processes. It also asks that you work collaboratively, becoming a hive-mind.
Amaara is looking for participants:
with some experience of choreography and performance;
who are 23 years or older, to gather an intergenerational group of players;
who work collaboratively and are interested in performance in site-specific contexts;
who can navigate in a busy environment, where there's lots of visual and sonic input but can find internal and external focus and concentration;
is interested in dance in the expanded field. By this I mean, conceptual frameworks, historical and theoretical entanglement, as well as somatic movement and composition;
who can commit for all three days and can be there from 7-9.30pm, as we’re looking to work with a committed community that builds a movement language across three days.
Project details:
Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 February 2024 (3 days)
We will work at dusk, 7-9.30pm.
Artist’s honorarium: $300 NZD (total)
Please only apply if you’re available for all three days and can be there from 7-9.30pm.
Video is an important part of this work, so by applying you’re giving permission to be videoed and for that video to be projected daily at The Performance Arcade screen, and other online spaces.
About Amaara:
Amaara Raheem (b. Sri Lanka) is a dance-artist whose work crosses many borders. Amaara practises multiple belongings, and is fascinated by meeting and exchanging with creative thinkers and workers; uniting experiences, skills, and efforts to make new tools for repair. She’s one of four co-editors for the online peer-reviewed journal ‘Choreographic Practices’. Recently, Amaara was awarded the Frank Van Straten Fellowship by Arts Centre Melbourne, to work with the Chunky Move dance archives.
Expression of Interest
To express your interest please send an email to amaarar@gmail.com responding to the following questions by 22 January 2024:
Your full name and phone number:
Why would you like to be a part of this project? (150 words)
A short bio or website link (100 words)
What you think you can bring to the project? (150 words)