LEHTE JUDE WALTON
Nineteenth-century literary invention from leht (leaf) Estonian female given name My mother’s name reversed Albanian lehtë lightweight, easy Old English lēoht light (of little weight) light (illumination)
Upstairs in Heide II, before being ushered into the performance, the audience views Jude Walton’s book display, notations and working drawings and a DVD of a Man in a Film by Phillippe Mora.
LEHTE PROGRAM NOTES Making the dance has been a process of reduction, a gradual stripping away and refusal of embellishment or ornamentation to find a movement of precision and plainness. The choreography draws attention to the temporal qualities of the Heide II building and our experience of it, how time passes from moment to moment, and the time we take to traverse the length of its walls. The dancers’ bodies create a spatial geography of points and lines through the building, drawing an ephemeral 3D map that connects interior and exterior, wall, floor and ceiling. The musical scores for Lehte have been generated through the dimensions and numerical proportions of Heide II. Notations for improvisation were made for each room or space, making it possible, for example, to ‘play’ the powder room and the architectural feature of the alcove/shelf. The sound reverberates from the piano through the empty building, giving space an aural definition. The dynamics that have governed the work include an engagement with dance precedents, the development of an intrinsic language (of the physical body and of materials), an encounter with a specific site (its corporeality, materiality and temporality, how the particularity of place motivates and activates ideas and bodies) and, as John Reed wrote of Joy Hester’s work, a striving to be ‘beyond fashion and local usage’. — Jude Walton
Incidental #1 After Sam Atyeo, Untitled (red figure in a landscape), c. 1934 Movement one: walking-on-walls 1–6 Andante Incidental #2 Fake grass squares. After Bruce Nauman and Meredith Monk, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, (1967–68) Movement two: void Under shelf Thirteen steps Powder-room walls and alcove shelf Incidental #3 Handstands with afternoon tea on the grass, After photograph of Joy Hester by Albert Tucker, c. 1960 Movement three: look point and line After Gret Palucca and Kandinsky’s 1926 book Point and Line to Plane Bedroom Study Living Room
Made by Jude Walton in collaboration with the performers: Phoebe Robinson, Fiona Bryant, Michelle Ferris and Kym Dillon. Costumes and scenography by Jude Walton. Thanks to Victoria University for its support of this project. Performances 2pm and 4pm, Friday 9 May to Sunday 11 May 2014.
Beyond my eyes horizon — a moonwashed thought, put the word within a box and take away the key. — Joy Hester, ‘Heart’ 1947