Rhiannon Newton

Rhiannon Newton – Long Sentences

“The negativity that comes from working with words, they miss a lot of the stuff, that is the stuff, that is why people like us like dancing.”

Rhiannon Newton

Rhiannon is an Australian dancer and choreographer. Her creative work draws attention to the interconnection of the body and the more-than-human world. Rhiannon makes contributions to community and culture through choreography, performance, education, research and curation. This discussion is focused on her work Long Sentences soon to premiere at DanceHouse.

  • the generosity of taking something seriously
  • the words from the show
  • co-existing with the work
  • a quote from the book “Sun and Steel – Mishima Yukio”
  • dancing and then writing from noticing
  • 3 sentences make up the show (the first sentence is 17 minutes long)
  • working with many mediums and being varied about how sure you are with each
  • there is a meaning and a logic
  • adjusting choreography so that it doesn’t just wash over people
  • breaking yourself apart into the materials (choreographic, performative etc)
  • “I don’t want anyone to be interested in me, I want them to see the work”.
  • we compare Xavier Le Roy to Beyoncè
  • the first day of rehearsals being dangerous due to having freedom from the show and it’s own agenda.
  • commenting on your own improvisation while you’re doing it
  • the self-undermine
  • doing choreography that is thrilling

“If i’m going to put this in front of someone I (decided that I) need to help them also take it seriously. And put something at stake.”

Rhiannon Newton

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Chloe Chignell

“publication as a form of performance and performance as a form of publication”

Chloe Chignell

Chloe Chignell (AU) is an artist working across text, choreography and publishing. Chloe takes the body as the central problem, question and location of her research. She invests in writing as a body building practice, examining the ways in which language makes us up.

Since 2019 Chloe co-runs rile* a bookshop and project space for publication and performance with Sven Dehens.

  • the durability of the object
  • performer-ship and audience-ship
  • a performance demands shared time and shared space
  • shadow text at DanceHouse
  • Amina Szecsödy
  • JOKES – the book
  • the lead artist being the host
  • translation
  • “dance is not a language, but it is a form”
  • “it felt uninteresting to try to translate text to dance, i felt like it would just enslave the dance into a form of meaning production. dance has other skills”
  • working with dance vs working with choreography
  • “they are real books but they are also scenography”
  • the difference in permanence
  • waterworld movie paper scene
  • the iconography of ballroom dance
  • the name – street dance
  • anachronistic – meaning
  • the use of the term experimental
  • choreographic frameworks
  • to dance with or without an internalised choreographers eye
  • live decisions on stage
  • “the choreography is producing syntax”

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Jeff Hsieh – 謝杰樺

“you have to know yourself really well (because everything else is changing faster than it ever has)”

Jeff Hsieh (謝杰樺)

Jeff Hsieh (謝杰樺) is the current artistic director of Anarchy Dance Theatre. His works feature a strong element of interactive dance performance and leverage technology to expand the field of choreography. We cover;

  • how technology has changed our lives
  • the body
  • machine interventions
  • new physical experience
  • the eternal straight line
  • surgery at a distance
  • digital worlds
  • AI in art
  • new media arts / old media arts
  • skills used to have a long tail of value
  • knowing what you’re doing
  • mid-journey

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