Now Pieces #1 – A little animalising
curated by Tony Yap
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Animalising – Becoming Animal / Intense / Imperceptible (2024). Photo by Teague Leigh.
Now Pieces continues a long standing disciplined exploration of embodied performance practice that leads to crafted, spontaneous and artful communication made on-the-go. On four Tuesdays across the year, Now Pieces offers an improvisational performance evening at Dancehouse dedicated to low-fi public performances curated by and featuring local dance luminaries. With each iteration an invited curator or collective will host and program Now Pieces following the seasons.
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Tony Yap on Now Pieces #1 – A little animalising :
“Animality is an exercise” – M Foucault, Le Courage de la vérité
Perhaps its time for a notion ‘to fail’, to be able to say ‘I know nothing’. All I have is a simple notion of how I can find a portal to drop into a spectrum of trance in a dance. To be able to drop into an other state.
Without the tyranny of a dance form, the body founds its own furnishings. Every nerve, every joint, tendons muscles is utilised to serve the muted speech, the unsayable.
It suggests that states of becoming-animal start with our individual’s desire for the unobtainable or unpossessable, encompassing our bodies’ interaction with unfamiliar elements.
Curator/Performer: Tony Yap
Sound Artist / Performer: Reuben Lewis
Collaborators / Performers: Jack Riley, Isabella Antonacci
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Reuben Lewis – musician, composer and trumpeter:
Reuben Lewis is a musician of white settler heritage with an active practice in cross-genre, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He has worked with movement artists since 2015 on large scale and site specific works, most frequently with influential trance movement practitioner Tony Yap for premieres at festivals such as AsiaTOPA in Australia and MAP Melaka in Malaysia. Other projects include ‘Memoir for Rivers and The Dictator’ with Lilian Steiner, premiered at Dance Massive, ARIA nominated ‘Closed Beginnings’ with poet Tariro Mavondo and APRA Art Music Award winning ‘Silent Towns’, a 24hr telematic work by the Phonetic Orchestra. Reuben is the Artistic Director of I Hold the Lion’s Paw, an ensemble founded in 2016 with a goal to make genre defying work with a distinctly Australian musical identity. Recent projects include ‘Lost in Place’ – a durational jazz-butoh crossover performance devised in collaboration with Yumi Umiumare and Taka Takiguchi (滝口貴), and‘Imagination Exploration’ – a touring program for children focusing non idiomatic group improvisation devised in collaboration with Musica Viva Australia in Schools. Reuben was appointed Australian Art Orchestra’s Pathfinder Associate Artist (2019/2020), AMC Artistic Associate for Jazzahead! (2020-2021) and was a 2018+2019 Freedman Jazz Fellowship nominee.
Jack Riley – dancer/choreographer:
Jack is a multi-genre performer, actor and digital artist based in Melbourne. Jack is a graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts (BFA) Dance. After graduating he was commissioned as VCA and Melbourne University’s ambassador for dance presenting his work Duplex at the Academy de bel Arti Florence for the University’s “First Commissions” marketing campaign. Jack has performed for several Australian dance companies, Chunky Move under Antony Hamilton ‘Token Armies’ Melbourne international festival 2019 and opening ceremony at Potato Head Bali, Indonesia for Futura ‘Pointman warrior’ sculpture unveiling 2022. Australian Opera ‘King Roger’ 2018, Tasdance 2017 and force Majeure ‘You animal, you’ Arts House 2018 Melbourne International festival. Alongside performing Jack has created and produced three of his own self- funded fulllength dance works. ‘Alone’ 2018 was toured and presented at Chunky Move, Canberra Theatre Centre and State Theatre centre Perth. Now Jack is pursuing acting roles starring in multiple short films, ‘Each Other’ 2020 presented at Melbourne International Film festival, Brisbane International Film Festival and Slamdance film festival 2021. ‘Incarnation’ directed by Bernard Winter 2023 was nominated for best short film and best actor at the St Kilda film festival and nominated for AACTA Awards for best short film.
Tony Yap – dancer/choreographer:
Tony Yap, born in Malaysia, is an accomplished dancer, director, choreographer and visual artist. Tony was one of the principle performers with IRAA Theatre (1989-1996). He has made a commitment to the exploration and creation of an individual dance theatre language that is informed by psycho-physical research, Asian shamanistic trance dance, Butoh and psycho-vocal experimentations. Tony has received numerous nominations and awards including The Decay of the Angel which won him a Green Room Award for Male Dancer Award; and Rasa Sayang was nominated for The Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance. He has been a leading figure in inter-cultural discourse and received Asialink residential grants to work in Indonesia in 2005, and 2008 and a Dance fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts. Tony is the founding Creative Director of Melaka Arts and Performance Festival – MAP Fest.
He has contributed significantly to the development of contemporary dance & performance practice, particularly bringing a non-Western perspective to the palette of work being created. His practice is grounded in: Asian philosophies, sensibilities and forms; inter-cultural and multi-disciplinary approaches; ongoing relationships and collaborations that deepen over time; inclusiveness, diversity and individuality; process, evolution and the emergent. Tony’s contemporary trance praxis has resulted in his recent Phd thesis, Trance-forming Dance.
