Inertia #2
Piaera Lauritz, Rukshikaa Elankumaran, Shelley O’Meara, Zoë Bastin, Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff
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A bill of five works from Piaera Lauritz, Rukshikaa Elankumaran, Shelley O’Meara, Zoë Bastin, and Kady Mansour with Michaela Tancheff. Presented as part of the 2021 Inertia program at Dancehouse.
Piaera Lauritz | Softer Terracotta (Film)
The breeze aches while we watch
ourselves being watched
and squeeze/hold/shift our threading thoughts
(a blanket made with needle eyes)
See
we are getting gentle with the edges,
but crisp lines persist.
Concept, direction and editing: Piaera Lauritz
Performers: Emma Riches, Claire Leske, Piaera Lauritz
Camera: James Lauritz
Music: R.P. Downie, Isadora Lauritz
Special thanks to: Jo Lloyd, Temperance Hall, Miro Lauritz, Thalia Livingstone
This project was supported by the City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Fund.
Rukshikaa Elankumaran | Kumari Kandem
This work uses Indian Classical dance, music and poetry to depict the mythical continent, ‘Kumari Kandam’ (also known as ‘Lemuria’); believed to have been submerged in the Indian Ocean centuries ago. References to this continent are found in old Tamil literature from the Sangam Era and the work intends to reflect the loss of life, culture and art that ethnic minorities face today due to assimilation into Western cultures.
Music Composition: Beven Elankumaran
Lyrics: Padmadevan
Vocal: Keshav Ram & Shradda Ganesh
Percussion: Satheepan Elankumaran
Choreography: Rukshikaa Elankumaran
Dancers: Alicia Roy, Anirudh Sivaramakrishnamurthy, Aparna Shastry, Keerthi Jaishankar, Vinisha Siddulugari, Rukshikaa Elankumaran
Shelley O’Meara | Bellows of a church shaped hall (Film)
A figure is confronted by an incomprehensible entity, and so, they dance.
As the first waves of the pandemic broke across the world in 2020 the artist was living alone in a haunted cottage with little budget and no tripod. As all plans and goals for the year fell away, Bellows of a Church Shaped Hall (2020) emerged frame by frame as an examination of existential and intangible threat.
Featuring a score recorded on site by long time collaborator Gemma Notara and the dance of Caroline Ellis, all elements of this film were made over the three months the artist lived in residence at Montsalvat Arts Centre.
Directed/choreographed: Shelley O’Meara
Composition: Gemma Notara
Dance: Caroline Ellis and Shelley O’Meara
Zoë Bastin | Waves Are Disturbances
Waves are Disturbances explores the nature and complexities of consent inspired by the movement of ocean waves and how we navigate them. The performance carries a powerful message about the importance of bodily autonomy through the agency of dance.
Creative Director and Choreographer: Zoë Bastin
Dramaturg: Philipa Rothfield
Director: Louis Roach
Producer: Beth Raywood Cross
Costume Designer: Siobhan Byrne
Composer: Grace Ferguson
Videographer and Photographer: Jordan Kaye
Dancer: Hayley Does
Kady Mansour with Michaela Tancheff | Michaela and Kady were here 2021
Two women walked into a toilet cubicle.
Collaborators: Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff
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Pia Lauritz is a performer, choreographer and filmmaker interested in creating visually striking, witty, and sensitive work. Her current practice focuses on cultivating a compassionate body to people, objects and spaces and manifests in explorations into ecological sensitivity and the acts of seeing or being seen.
Rukshikaa Elankumaran is a Bharathanatyam dancer with a practice rooted deep in the Indian Classical tradition who aims to discover ways in which she can make her art accessible and enjoyable by people of various diverse backgrounds.
Coming from an animation, martial arts and contact improvisation background, Shelley O’Meara’s practice focuses on creating interdisciplinary performance works that integrate projection and dance into a holistic movement language. Thematically, her research focuses on how an individual’s socio-political context affects the way they use their body in social space, specifically how and why an individual may embody power.
Zoë Bastin is an artist who makes performances, sculptures, videos, photos and I run a radio show. She’s fascinated by the porousness of the body, where it starts and ends and how culture inscribes ideas of gender and sexuality onto our physical form.
Kady Mansour is currently exploring the lens through which the public eye perceives contemporary or abstract movement, investigating how dance can be made more accessible to the public. She is curious to blur the lines between the choreography of everyday life and abstract movement in an attempt to understand ways in which people can become more physically connected to their own bodies and selves.
This program is funded by the Packer Family and Crown Resorts Foundations. The pilot program was proudly supported by Clifton Hill/North Fitzroy Community Bank Branch – Bendigo Bank and the Robert Salzer Foundation.
