Move It
Broadly speaking there are two contexts for dance – one is the art of choreographed human movement performed for an audience, and the other a social form where the main game is participation. Both have practitioners at every point on the proficiency spectrum. Believing that finding the nexus between them would increase engagement in them both, by 2009 we had embarked on an exploration of dance which, between then and now, has invigorated love of aesthetic movement in its many forms across our regions.
-
daklinic Keith 2007 -
Rebecca Bainger, originally from the Fleurieu, presented the second development of Coming Home renamed Continuum with dancers who had trained with Rebecca in their youth for Just Add Water 2013. -
Skip OnePoint 218 with kids. Photo: Erica J Harris -
Blak Nite - The D’n’A initiative was able to broker a partnership between Kurruru and Carclew Youth Arts with saw dancer Angela McMillan travel to the Riverland region during April and May for 6 half day intensive workshops and one full week intensive workshop (during the Easter school holidays) with 7 aboriginal youth from both Glossop Middle School and Renmark High School. This led to a performance outcome as part of Blak Nite Come Out 09. -
-
From the Ground Up: Restless Dance Company & Riverland Special School: All students had an intellectual disability and 12 also had a physical disability. 16 full days residency. ‘From the Ground Up’ was performed at the Chaffey Theatre, Renmark to great acclaim. -
A multi-dimensional two-year program to ignite interest in dance performance in 2015/16, DanceXtend connected potential audiences to contemporary dance in the months between performances by touring professional dance companies, building longer term relationships with them. Defining dance as any movement by the body and validating everyone’s interpretation of it, it made dance more accessible and more comprehensible. The Jungle Gym, (a three dimensional interactive structure which takes the individual through a series of contemporary dance moves), was the standout amongst, many opportunities for people to put the toe in the water and overall the program succeeded in bringing more people into the theatre. -
Get Down (Get Dance out West Now) ran for a year in Wudinna, Streaky Bay and Ceduna and engaged 18 professional dance practitioners over 18 months for a skills development program, delivering a total of 105 workshops. The workshops attracted 1,683 participants and provided 68 professional development opportunities. -
The new dance work 'The Spinners' by Lina Limosani was originally developed during a residency at the Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre and will now premiere at the same venue in 2018. -
Australian Dance Theatre will engage with Dance Schools across the Riverland in 2018 before presenting 'The Beginning of Nature' at the Chaffey Theatre in Renmark. -
Under My Feet was a collaboration in film, dance and music exploring site specific practice and performance by local artists from the regional community of Port Elliot, produced by Country Arts SA as part of Just Add Water. It was produced in several stages over two years and launched in 2013. Collaborators were Heather Frahn, Jeni Lee and Dianne Reid with Rebecca Bainger, Beverly Grace, Rachel High, Frodo Krochmal, Maggie O’Moore, Evie Photakis and Belinda Sanders.
Often a shared activity and often inextricably linked to a complex cultural structure, it is a medium that can ignite interest at a visceral level, where people feel they belong. Dance N Action (D’n’A) began by instigating exchanges between dance professionals, both within and outside the regions, bringing practitioners of diverse dance genres together into shared celebrations, rolling out a multi-layered workshop program, exploring pathways for emerging talent and drawing young people into dance through forms that are an inherent part of their culture, like hip hop.
By 2015, Guerrilla-style interventions became the modus operandi of DanceXtend, engaging all-comers in conversations with practitioners about the expansive palette of movement that is contemporary dance, exploration of the moves and acceptance of the notion that each person’s interpretation of contemporary dance is no less valid for being different from someone else’s.
Partly the ‘mere-exposure effect’, but mainly a deeper, multi-layered engagement, the sum of these parts has cultivated a more complex understanding of dance where contemporary dance is a much less challenging staged art for many more people to witness, and an environment where richly layered collaborations lead to new dance works for film and stage.
