A note from Artistic Director

Rafael Bonachela

Unfolding in front of you are four humans alive in their physicality and consciousness, negotiating a mosaic of impulses.

As a concept, I Am-ness allows us to express this state of being in one breath. Created in concert with you, their audience, is a momentary constellation of feelings, thoughts and sensations.

This work is a call to action for those that embody it. A call to let go.

I chose to revisit the powerful work of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks for this work. In Vasks’ Lonely Angel the strings yearn softly as the dancers cross fault lines with a euphoric tenderness. Unravelling amidst smoke, they come as they are. Sudden movements flicker as echoes of thought, building and evolving before touching for brief moments of stillness. Rapid sequences appear and reappear before returning to familiar places that are somehow changed.

I Am-ness hinges on the four dancers’ exquisite level of awareness. Naiara, Piran, Madeline and Riley breathed a burning energy into this work which I am endlessly thankful for. The movement onstage is a direct translation from the atmosphere in the Studio, where I encouraged quick, instinctive decision making. I would play the music without pausing for our thoughts to catch up, never wanting to break the flow. The result is something you can’t fake. It’s honest, alive and instinctive.

Four orbiting bodies tumbling, pushing, holding. I Am-ness is as external as it is internal, as perceived as it is felt. Each dancer revels in the gaze and touch of the collective. Breathing as one. Beating as one.

Damien Cooper Lighting Designer

Biography

Damien Cooper works internationally across theatre, opera and dance. Damien’s dance credits for Sydney Dance Company include; Resound, ab [intra], Impermanence, Cinco, Ocho, Grand, Air and Other Invisible Forces and Orb.

Other dance credits include; State (Western Australian Ballet), Of Earth and Sky (Bangarra), The Narrative of Nothing, Firebird and Swan Lake (Australian Ballet), Giselle (Universal Ballet), Birdbrain, Supernature, Habitus and Be Your Self (Australian Dance Theatre), The Frock (Ten Days on the Island Festival), Affinity (Tas Dance), Mortal Engine (Chunky Move) and Grey Rhino (Performing Lines).

Other Theatre credits include Counting & Cracking (Edinburgh International Festival/ Belvoir), Mark Colvin’s Kidney, The Great Fire, Radiance, The Glass Menagerie, Coranderrk, Miss Julie, Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Peter Pan, Private Lives, Conversation Piece, Strange Interlude, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Neighbourhood Watch, The Seagull, Gethsemane, Keating!, Toy Symphony, Peribanez, Stuff Happens, The Chairs, The Spook, In Our Name, The Underpants and The Ham Funeral (Belvoir); Disgraced, Orlando, Arcadia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Golden Age, Suddenly Last Summer, The Women of Troy, The Lost Echo, Riflemind and Tot Mom (Sydney Theatre Company); Macbeth and The Tempest (Bell Shakespeare); The Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Aida and Cosi Fan Tutte (Opera Australia); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Houston Grand Opera, Canadian Opera, Lyric Opera Chicago); and The Magic Flute (Lyric Opera Chicago).

For lighting design, Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards, four Green Room Awards, and two Australian Production Design Guild Awards.

Note

The exquisite Vasks score “Lonely Angel” elevates you as a human, pushes you on an emotional journey. The dancers and the choreography of Rafael are like liquid, ever changing, ever flowing... The lighting and atmospherics will take you out of this world. Dreams are made like this. Soft, gentle, ecstatic and wonderful.