absences
disappearances | abduction | lossa work that looks at what we have left behind
and how we have left it
Absence(s) crossed the boundaries of dance, installation art and promenade theatre.
This haunting work carried all the metaphorical freight of ‘moving’, and aimed with precision to inculcate and experiential audience reaction. It did so by riskily locating the centre of the work in an absence, in things unsaid and unspecified.
Adorno insisted that “intelligence is a moral category”. In that sense, it was the sheer intelligence of Absence(s) that triumphed over potentially ennervating material, over the aching sadness of things.
Douglas Leonard - RealTime
This work was externally situated in an undisclosed venue to confront exterior and interior anxieties; this work powerfully explores issues of disappearances and abduction. audience were transported to forgotten sites to witness the first stage of this powerful performance.
the work immersed the audience in the concept: at first they were separated from whomever they came with, then they were asked to take off their shoes and surrender their personal belongings. then they moved into small rooms where the walls were made of plastic - they could hear and vaguely see others but were the others performers, ghosts or their fellow audience members?
the audience were forced to walk on hundreds of clothes and witness the remains of absent lives - 3000 photographs of missing people, a room full of hundreds of shoes, a wall with the memories of a life written backwards. suspended throughout the space were light globes making it both a familiar and distant experience.
CREATIVE TEAM
Performers: Brian Lucas, Avril Huddy, Vanessa Mafe, Tammy Meeuwissen
Choreography - Clare Dyson
Lighting design & production management - Mark Dyson
Design - Bruce Mckinven
Sound - Brett Collery
Photography - Fiona Cullen
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by Arts Qld through a major performance grant and made in partnership with the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts (Brisbane) and TanzFabrik (Berlin)