On The Table – Season 2
run by Caitlin Dear & Rebecca Jensen
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On The Table is a weekly event for artistic exchange and collaboration run by Caitlin Dear and Rebecca Jensen.
Each week’s session is hosted by a different artist or collective who is invited to put something ‘on the table’ for everyone to unpack together. The program features artists working with different forms of dance, approaches to choreography, methods of bodily practice and relationships to movement. OTT highlights research, process, experimentation, and interdisciplinary practice.
OTT is free to attend and the artist hosting does not receive a fee. We encourage generosity in a weekly exchange of ideas, energy and time. If you are a dancer or curious about embodied practice and proccess, you are welcome to participate.
On The Table #1 (March — June 2024)
On The Table #2
Monday 9 September , 6pm – Arabella Frahn-Starkie
Arabella Frahn-Starkie is a dance artist whose interest in the transmission of embodied practices and experiences has led her into dance archiving documentation. This session will be a choreographic workshop exploring the lived interface between the dancing body and its traces (photography, video, writing, drawing, memory). We will play with tools for using documentation as a stimulus for creation and, as naff as it sounds, connecting with our creative voice. Where do we put – and what do we do with – the narely accessed nostalgic baggage and detritus of media we create and carry?
Monday 16 September , 6pm – Kari Lee McInneny-McRae & Caitlin Dear
With a lived experience of crip body-minds, Kari and Caitlin will offer a collective community reading group to examine and discuss writings by disabled authors. We will read and rest together, in various constellations. We will dream about the forms a crip reading group could take. Non-disabled folks are welcome to join in by listening, reading and resting with us. Texts will be provided, though feel free to bring materials to share or read solo. Bring any items you’d like for your own comfort
Break During Melbourne Fringe Festival
Monday 21 October , 6pm – Abi Benham-Bannon
Abi will share her early-stage PhD research asking: What might arise through solo and collective dance research spaces that invite a (re)imagining of a) human relationships with(in) the more-than-human and b) socio-ecological concepts such as sustainability? And how might these spaces in turn affect human responses to socio-ecological challenges such as climate change?
Monday 28 October , 6pm – Samantha Lester
Samantha will share and workshop elements of her performance in-development. Milk delves into the ephemeral nature of creation and the ongoing struggle for dance artists to mould the intangible. Inspired by the nature of clay continuously transforming into milk when slipping through an artist’s fingers, Milk explores themes of impermanence, frustration and the ephemerality of creation in relation to female labour.
Monday 4 November , 6pm – Bronwen Kamasz
“The Exquisite Corpse Will Drink the New Wine” (ECWDNW) is a video performance practice Bronwyn developed over a recent 3 month residency. Marking an expansion of her dance and improvisation practice, she will share experiments in working with audio-visual material (AI, digital and analogue) in live performance. In this session we will create our own AI imagery, work with ECWDNW and ponder the consequences of AI being able to ‘imagine’.
Monday 11 November , 6pm – Gabriella Imrichova & Lucia Gugerli (CH/DE)
Audacity, Irreverence, Rigour: This workshop is about cultivating agency, cultivating the ungovernable, and cultivating a liberation from Shoulds—shoulds surrounding practice, process, making, professionalism, and the business of it all. Part-rant-symposium-
Monday 18 November , 6pm – William McBride
The Alexander Technique for Dancing… and for Everything Else:
William is a performer, choreographer and producer, who is also nearing the end of his Alexander Technique teacher training. For this OTT he will offer an introduction to the Alexander Technique, exploring its key themes and principles.
Frequently misinterpreted as a modality of therapeutic treatment, the Alexander Technique is more like an intimate, personalised education where you learn about your ‘use’ patterns, and how to improve your psycho-physical coordination.
Its application is wide: performing arts, back pain, concentration, mental clarity, addiction, voice – i.e., a technique for living…and dancing! The session will include some practical exercises and most likely some improvised dance. The Alexander Technique involves hands-on application, which may form part of the workshop.
Monday 25 November , 6pm – Haocheng Zhang with Weichen Cui and Monica Lim
Tea Brewing Under the Tree 树下煮茶:
An immersive exploration of interdisciplinary co-creation around the table. Zhang, Cui and Lim will test out performance material involving harmonious intersections of tea brewing, movement drawing, dance, live music, and communal gathering, through an experimental setup.
We will come together around the table to brew, share, move, create and draw in ways that blend tradition with innovation. Through this shared practice, a dynamic group experience may emerge, bridging the performance and conceptual in a unique collaborative process.
Sessions range from workshops and in-progress performance showings to open artistic explorations. Artists might share choreographic material, a practice, an idea, a framework, a question, a score, a reading or any manner of provocation. Everyone is invited to take part in the tasks at hand. Participation can be as little or as much as desired and you are free to come and just watch.
On The Table is free to attend and everyone is welcome whether you’re a professional dancer or you’ve never danced before. Please wear comfortable clothing that you can move in and bring a water bottle.
For any questions or to submit an idea, please contact [email protected]
Instagram: @on.the.table.melb
