WEEK 2

WEEK TWO

FRIDAY 26 & SATURDAY 27 AUGUST

6.30PM - JULIA BY NATALIE ALLEN

8.15PM - EXPLICIT CONTENTS BY RHIANNON NEWTON

JULIA is created from source material drawn from the parliamentary record, newspaper, radio and related media reportage, social media, and wider public commentary on Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

We have taken exact phrases (and quotes) that have been written about her and re-framed this through the body of the performer.

JULIA is created in three distinct sections, roughly following a time frame that moves from the past into the present moment. Solo performer Natalie Allen crafts, constructs and embodies a complex portrayal, shaping and framing her reading of Gillard (and of misogyny) through her body, her voice, and her choice of outfit and prop. She reviews, represents, reflects, recognises. She constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs, responding, revolting, and revisioning. She is remembering Gillard, she is every woman, she is herself.

JULIA is dedicated to our mothers and grandmothers, to the generations of women who have courageously advocated and fought for the rights we have today. We are grateful to them for their bravery, resilience and determination, that has given us a chance to speak and to be heard. We are all part of this collective story and we have a role to play and a job to do to raise awareness, to continue to fight for progress and change.

Gillard is also the springboard of what is a portrait of Natalie Allen; as dancer and performer, artist, storyteller and woman. It has been gift to collaborate with her and this amazing team of independent artists. A solo work is never a ‘solo’ work, and we thank this outstanding company of artists, designers, producers and technicians who have collectively come together to realise this production.

Sally Richardson, co creator. Created by

Director

Performer Natalie Allen and Sally Richardson

Sally Richardson

Natalie Allen

Sound design/ composition

Set design Joe Paradise Lui and Annika Moses Featured song composed/performed by Rachael Dease

Helen Fitzgerald

Lighting design Joe Paradise Lui

Costume design Nicole Marrington

Creative producer Libby Klysz

Stage manager Georgia Smith

Executive producers Steamworks Arts with Feisty Dame Productions

JULIA NATALIE ALLEN

Creator & Performer

Natalie Allen is an award-winning dancer with an extensive professional career. She has collaborated and performed work by leading choreographers from Australia & around the world; Rafael Bonachela, Adam Linder, Emanuel Gat, Jacopo Godani, Larrisa McGowan, Alexander Ekman, Gary Stewart, Natalie Weir, Alexander Whitley, Gwyn Emberton, William Forysthe, Samantha Chester & Richard Cilli. Allen has been creating work since 2013 which has been presented locally, nationally & internationally.

Last year, Allen went to Komunitas Salihara, Jakarta, for STRUT Dance International SEED residency. Climacteric a site-specific solo work originally made In Situ 2017, was presented at Contact M1 Festival 2019, Singapore. ‘A Night Out!’ a community show reinventing social dance, created in 2017, toured regional WA in 2019. Allen performed in Maxine Doyle’s ‘Sunset’, Perth Festival 2019 & joined the cast of Punchdrunk’s ‘Sleep No More’ in Shanghai. Recently she choreographed a solo for SLIDE Dance Theatre’s new show ‘Beam Me Up, Kate’ and is choreographing on LINK dance company for their 2020 November season.

JULIA COLLABORATORS

Sally Richardson (Director/co-creator/co-producer)

Sally is an award-winning writer/director & producer. She has worked for companies & organisations; Black Swan Theatre Company, Perth Theatre Company, Deckchair Theatre, Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, The Flying Fruitfly Circus, Malthouse Theatre, Company Belvoir, NICA, NAISDA, WAAPA, CIRCA & ABC Radio.

Productions of her work have been awarded Helpmann, Green Room, Blue Room, Ausdance WA Awards, Dance Australia Critics Choice & been presented at major arts festivals nationally (Sydney, Perth & Melbourne) & internationally including Shanghai International Arts Festival, Beijing Dance Festival & Sao Paolo Festival. She has created works across multiple platforms in Australia & overseas. She is a past recipient of an Australia Council Dramaturgy Fellowship & a Creative Arts Fellowship (DCAWA). She is Artistic Director of Steamworks Arts (since 2000).

Dance/theatre works include; the multi award winning The Drover’s Wives, Standing Bird & Standing Bird 2 & GUI SHU (Belong). Sally has collaborated on projects with choreographers; Sue Peacock,Felicity Bott, Rakini Devi, Shannon Bott, Kynan Hughes, Company Loaded, Stefan Karlsson, Danielle Micich,Daisy Sanders, Jodie Farrugia & others.

She has directed/ produced dance films; The Drover’s Wives,Standing Bird 1 & 2, VAKA & Eliza, Belonging & JHIH exhibiting films nationally & internationally. Recent works inc.; Trigger Warning (PLWA & PICA), FEARLESS & CATCH! for MAXIMA Circus, dance/theatre workFlesh & Bones Micromove & Kiss Club & MEDEA for Black Swan Theatre Company. She developed #thatwomanjulia with Natalie Allen for Strut’s Shortcuts then NEXT for Move Me Festival 2018. Sam Chester (Movement consultant/rehearsal director)

Sam is an award-winning theatre maker, movement director, performer & educator. For 20 Years she has been working with the physical form, as a contemporary dancer, director & choreographer in theatre & dance. She has worked with all the major theatre companies in Sydney including Force Majeure.

She was Head of Movement & Associate Director at the Actors Centre Australia 2008-2015 & has taught & directed extensively at NIDA & other performing arts institutions. She was awarded the Mike Walsh fellowship to travel to NY to train with the SITI Company in Viewpoints & Suzuki disciplines & in 2013 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship traveling to Spain, France, UK & Belgium investigating devising techniques in dance & theatre. She was Associate Artist for Critical Path, NSW’s Choreographic Centre & is the co-founder of Queen Street Studio &founder of independent dance space Ready Made Works. Her recent works include the Astronaut & HIRO: the man who sailed his house for the Blue Room Theatre.

JULIA COLLABORATORS

Joe Lui (Sound design/composition; lighting design)

Joe is a founding member of Renegade Productions & creates, writes, directs, designs & composes theatre & performance works. Recent works inc; Unveiling, & Death Throes, presented at the Blue Room Theatre in 2019. Joe is a regular contributing part of the professional& independent theatre industry in Perth as a director, writer, sound & lighting designer. He has worked with most Perth based companies including Black Swan State Theatre Company, Yirra Yaakin, Deckchair Theatre & the vast majority of independent companies. Recent lighting designs inc. Black Swan productions I am My Own Wife & You know We Belong Together, Kynan Hughes Love/Less & NEXT for Move Me Festival. He was director/sound designer for Unsung Heroes for Black Swan STC.

Joe has collaborated with Director Sally Richardson on composition & lighting for Standing Bird 2, Mermaid X,Flesh & Bones, #thatwomanjulia, FEARLESS, & CATCH! Helen Fitzgerald (production design) is a set & costume designer & prop stylist working across film,television, performance, advertising & fashion. Helen’s work has been awarded a Fox Studios Award for Excellence in Design, a Gold AWARD Award for Production Design 2019 & a Bronze Cannes Lion 2019.Helen was selected as an emerging production designer for the Berlinale Talent Campus at the Berlin Film Festival & awarded the Alchemy Arts Grant at the Abbotsford Convent Arts Precinct, Victoria. Helen has designed for international music artists such as Sia & local video artists such as Pilar Mata Dupont. She directed & designed performances for New Movement Collective at the Architectural Association’s inter-professional Studio, London, The Lisbon Architecture Triennale & The Matadero Contemporary Arts Centre Madrid. She holds a Master of Arts in Production Design from AFTRS (the Australian Film,Television and Radio School), a Graduate Diploma in Spatial Performance & Design from the Architectural Association in London as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Design (Curtin University)Annika Moses (sound artist/ design) is an emerging sound artist in text-based composition, radio phonicworks, community radio & transmission arts, vocal improvisation, immersive theatre & install

From the Choreographer: “The edge of the body has disappeared; the environment has seeped inside and come to live amongst body parts; the nervous system feels its way far beyond the skin.”

Explicit Contents was born from my desire to emphasise how bodies are not separate from but inextricably connected to their environments. Throughout the creative process, I kept returning to the sensation of submerging myself in the ocean, to the feeling of the watery mass of my body dissolving amongst the watery mass of the sea. There is something in this thick sensation of connection between the body and the world that feels pertinent, that feels important for how we sense ourselves as deeply involved with the wellbeing of our surroundings.

I envision Explicit Contents as a series of sensorial encounters, each amplifying a different material or energetic connection between the body and the world. The work seeks to sensitise audiences to the visceral and sensuous nature of these connections, encouraging them to feel how our bodies interweave us with the more-thanhuman world.

“Burning and cooling, hungering and satiating, incorporating and expelling, the body emerges as a site of action and exchange. The skin, like the theatre, is porous and dotted with entrances and exits. At certain speeds, edges blur and contents merge with their surroundings. One material meets another and pushing up against it realises the force of its own will. Metabolizing, the body heats up, making and burning energy from the inside out. Water, like the contents of the body, seeks a kind of resting place away from here.”

Choreographed by Rhiannon Newton

Performers David Huggins, Ivey Wawn

Music and Sound Design Peter Lenaerts

Lighting Design Karen Norris

Costume Design Agnes Choi

Producer Katy Green Loughrey

Explicit Contents was commissioned and produced with the support of Campbelltown Arts Centre through Campbelltown City Council and premiered at Sydney Festival 2021. The presentation of Explicit Contents has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. The presentation of Explicit Contents is also supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

EXPLICIT CONTENTS RHIANNON NEWTON

Choreographer

Rhiannon is an Australian dancer and choreographer who grew up on Dunghutti Land on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. Her creative work draws attention to the interconnection of the body and the more-than-human world. Working from Gadigal Land (Sydney), Rhiannon makes contributions to community and culture through choreography, performance, collaboration, teaching, research and curation.

Rhiannon’s recent projects include A Strange Place (Dance Nucleus, 2022); The Gift of Warning (New Breed, 2021); Explicit Contents (Sydney Festival, 2021); Long Sentences (Baltic Circle, 2019; Live Dreams 2020); and We Make Each Other Up (Dancehouse, 2018). Rhiannon has developed her choreographic practice through residencies and commissions throughout Australia, South-East Asia, Europe and North America, such as ARTEFACT (Singapore, 2022); The Unconformity (Tasmania, 2021); The Australia Council HIAP International Residency (Helsinki, 2019); Trois C-L (Luxembourg, 2019), Dancehouse Housemate (Melbourne, 2018); Critical Path Responsive Residency (Sydney, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022) and Movement Research (New York, 2013).

Rhiannon also works as a performer and collaborator with artists such as Mette Edvardsen (BE), Martin del Amo, Lee Serle, Ivey Wawn, Amrita Hepi, Rosalind Crisp, Paea Leach, Angela Goh and Brooke Stamp. In 2022 she completed a Master degree at UNSW titled An Embodied Ecological Condition: Dance Practices and the Development of Embodied Ecological Awareness. From 2019-2021 Rhiannon co-directed the artist-led independent dance organisation ReadyMade Works and she continues to co-curate the performance-lecture series Talking Bodies. Rhiannon is a part-time dance lecturer at the Australian College of Physical Education.

EXPLICIT CONTENTS COLLABORATORS

David Huggins

David began dancing while completing his psychology degree in Aotearoa New Zealand. After graduating with a Bachelor of Dance from the VCA, University of Melbourne, he worked with Russell Dumas’ Dance Exchange in Melbourne, performing nationally and internationally with the company for nine years. David has also worked for other artists including Douglas Wright, Xavier Le Roy, Rhiannon Newton and Martin Del Amo. Aside from his work as a dancer, he has begun to explore his own choreographic interests through various residencies, and recently presented his first full- length work, Once More, with Feeling in New Zealand.

Ivey Wawn

Ivey (1990) lives on Gadigal land (inner-sydney) where she works as a dancer and makes dancebased work for different contexts. Her practice centres on embodiment and its interplay with the historic specificities of capitalist social relations. Her most recent work In Perpetuity has been iterated as part of Next Wave 2020 (online), Liveworks 2021 (online and at Carriageworks, Sydney NSW), and CEMENTA 22 (Kandos, NSW). A subsidiary work to In Perpetuity called Expiration April 10 was presented in Monumental (working title) at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2022. Ivey has ongoing relationships as a dancer for a number of Australian choreographers including Rhiannon Newton, Atlanta Eke, Angela Goh and Brooke Stamp. She also works regularly with artists from a visual art context, notably an ongoing series of collaborations with Rochelle Haley since 2014. Peter Lenaerts

Peter is a Belgian sound artist active in the fields of performance, contemporary dance, & film. Lenaerts is fascinated by empty spaces and invisible or acousmatic sound. Sound that doesn’t scream for attention but sneaks into the listener’s ear unnoticed. Sound without ego, pure sound, with a focus on the medium rather than the maker. He was resident sound artist at the 2018 Hong Kong Arts Festival where he created music for Vortex by choreographer Wayson Poon. Other recent work includes Non-Place (2019) & MicroSleepDub (2015-2016). Apart from his own work, he has created soundtracks and composed music for choreographers and performance artists like Mette Ingvartsen, Andros Zinsbrowne, Salva Sanchis, Daniel Linehan, Eszter Salamon, ao. He strongly believes that in a culture dominated by visuals, nothing is as powerful, intense, and rewarding as simply listening.

Karen Norris

Karen has extensive experience as lighting designer for Theatre/Dance and Music throughout Australia and Europe. Based in London and Nice -1998 to 2008. Recent designs: Terrain, Lore- Bangarra Dance Theatre, NAISDA Francis Rings & Sani Ray, Songs Not To Dance To and Champions Martin del Amo, On View Sue Healey,CELLA Germany SF 2018 & Dance Massive 2019 & HIPS Narelle Benjamin, WinyanbogaYurringa AndreaJames Moogahlin, KOTAHI Atamira Dance Company NZ, Barbara and the Camp Dogs Belvoir Street, The Appleton Ladies Potatoe Race & The last Five Years Ensemble Theatre, Blak Box Barangaroo & SF 2019 Melbourne 2020 Urban Theatre, Broken Glass SF 2018 - The Weekend Liza-mare Syron SF2019 - New Zealand Festival 2019 Moogahlin, RED Liz Lea Dance, Rainbows End Darlinghurst Theatre, plenty serious TALK TALK Vicky van Hout, Blak Drop Effect Bankstown Arts Centre and Silence Karul Projects BlakDance and Sunshine Super Girl Andrea James Performing Lines.