Now Pieces is a platform for improvised performance that builds on the lineage of Cecil St Studio, a dance studio in Melbourne for 21 years that is now earmarked for demolition, to build apartments. Now Pieces continues a long standing disciplined exploration of embodied performance practice that leads to crafted, spontaneous and artful communication made on-the-go. This monthly program invites a range of intergenerational practitioners who — in one way or another — prioritise movement to incorporate body, sound, vocalisation, memory, image and energy, responding to each passing moment in relation to the space where they are dancing in relation to the audience. Now Pieces 2021 curates curators as well as performers, opening up improvisation as a relevant, urgent, poetic transdisciplinary practice that reflects back patterns and possibilities for freedom, and flight.

Now Pieces was conceived and run by Kevin Jeynes (2019); paused with the world (2020); coordinated by Amaara Raheem (March—June 2021).

Each month a different curator or collective is invited to host and program Now Pieces 2021.

Curator: Amaara Raheem
Performers: Manisha Anjali, Emily Bowman and Amaara Raheem (trio), Deanne Butterworth (solo), Janette Hoe and Ria Soemardjo (duet), Alexander Powers (solo), Rachael Wisby (solo), Antony Hamilton (solo)
Creative Correspondent: Jessie Brooks-Dowsett