Now Pieces Finalé
Kevin Jeynes and Amaara Raheem
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'Now Pieces June' (2021). Film still by Arabella Frahn Starkie.
Now Pieces is a celebratory gathering that runs over four consecutive nights, in December. At the heart of each Now Pieces is the disciplined exploration of improvisation-in-performance. Each performer is invited to play – in whatever way they choose – with the art of spontaneity.
Now Pieces has brought together a range of dancers, choreographers, sound artists and performers from a variety of backgrounds, styles, aesthetics, physical and conceptual training and put them side-by-side. All Now Pieces welcomes artists at any stage of their career, to move from their own practice, and to be part of a wider collective experience.
Now Pieces evolved out of improvisation events held regularly at Cecil St Studio, a dance studio in Melbourne for 21 years, that was considered the ‘home’ of improvisation-in-performance. This lineage of improvisation extends back to dance practices developed in the early 1960’s and 70’s in US and Europe. Now Pieces, like its predecessors, calls for an urgent reconsideration of the medium of dance encouraging the spirit of playfulness, permissiveness and in general, new uses of time, space, body and voice.
The art of Now Pieces is open, without fixed structure or a central theme. It takes each moment as it comes; navigates uncertainty; drifts in the gaps and margins of knowing. All these artists attempt – through movement, sound and/or speech – to respond to the moment they find themselves in, experiencing and altering the now.
Curated by Kevin Jeynes and Amaara Raheem
Tues 7 Dec, 7pm | Performances by: Born in a Taxi & Michael Havir, Rosie Fayman, Alice Cummins, Jo Lloyd & Deanne Butterworth, Geoffrey Watson, Amrita Hepi & Mish Grigor, Marnie Newton
Wed 8 Dec, 7pm | Performances by: Janette Hoe & Myfanwy Hunter, Kevin Jeynes, Peter Trotman & Noelle Reese Hatton, Carol Brown & Russell Scoones, Melanie Lane, Melinda Smith, Jennifer Ma & David Prakash
Thurs 9 Dec, 7pm | Performances by: Yumi Umimare & Emma Bathgate, Andrew Morrish, Rebecca Jensen, Neil Thomas, Alice Dixon and Will McBride, Efren Pamilacan & Pataphysics, Keke Luik
Fri 10 Dec, 7pm | Performances by: Rosalind Crisp, Emily Bowman & Joey Lehrer, Catherine Magill, Adam Forbes & Ron Reeves, Raina Peterson & Marco Cher-Gibard, Amaara Raheem
CLICK HERE for Now Pieces & Make it Up Club | Thur 9 Dec, 8.30pm
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Amaara Raheem is a movement artist, writer and researcher working to push the edges and boundaries of what dance can be, or become. She works as a solo and collaborative artist mainly on projects that engage with movement and words; communities and landscapes. More recently she’s been working as a curator, engaged in forms of interdisciplinary exchange, seeking to bring practices of care to performing as well as processes of doing and togethering.
Kevin Jeynes is variously an improvisational performance artist, educator, and arts inclusive psychotherapist. He has been a Lecturer and Supervisor in the Master of Therapeutic Arts Practice Program at The MIECAT Institute since 1999, at campuses in both Brisbane and Melbourne, and has maintained a private clinical practice since 1976. He has performed extensively throughout Australia at venues in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. His performance explorations have, over the past 20 years, incorporated movement, sound, song and text. Kevin trained extensively with Andrew Morrish, Tony Osborne and Al Wunder, each iconic practitioners and teachers of improvised performance in Australia.
