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Dancehouse is on Wurundjeri Country. We offer our respects to the Wurundjeri woi-wurrung people — and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people — who continue to dance on Country, and have done, for thousands of generations. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

On The Table #6

Alec Katsourakis, Thandi Bethune, Zoë Bastin, Derrick Duan

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'On The Table' (2021), Devika Bilimoria.
6—27 June 2022
6:30pm

Sylvia Staehli Theatre, Dancehouse

This is a free event. No bookings are required, just rock up. Please bring a water bottle and wear clothes you are comfortable to move in.

The studio is wheelchair accessible, with all gender and accessible bathrooms available. Please reach out with any accessibility requirements: [email protected]

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On The Table is a weekly event for artistic exchange and collaboration run by Caitlin Dear and Rebecca Jensen. Dancers of any training background, as well as people curious about movement though new to dance, are welcome.

Each week’s session is hosted by a different artist or collective who are invited to put something ‘on the table’ for everyone to examine together. The program features artists working with different styles of dance, approaches to choreography, methods of bodily practice and relationships to movement. On The Table particularly aims to highlight artists who work with dance in combination with other fields (for example gaming, science, therapy and visual art). Anyone from these intersecting fields are encouraged to come along!


Monday 6 June, 6.30pm — Alec Katsourakis

Cultivate a sense of playfulness with Alec Katsourakis, Jareen Wee and Robbie Belchamber. We’ll start with a physical warm up that smoothly leads into a facilitated jam session involving listening and responding to live sounds being created in real time by a musician. As the jam winds down, we’ll finish communally, sitting together and exploring mark making, drawing, or any medium of physical crafting/art making you want to bring in. In the past people have painted, sculpted wire, sketched, etc. If you are not sure what to bring, a notebook and pencil will do fine, otherwise there’ll be a selection of materials for you to play with on the night.

This practice can help create a sense of creative catharsis. If you’d like to re-access, re-appraise or deepen your connection to creative flow or your inner child/artist, this session is for you.

Monday 13 June, 6.30pm — Thandi Bethune — POSTPONED DUE TO SICKNESS

Thandi will share (and ask for your help in developing) a work-in-progress that uses improvised movement to interpret a poem she wrote during the pandemic. The poem explores notions of stagnation, progress, isolation and perseverance.

Rather than creating a dance or performance in response to this poem, Thandi’s aim is to develop personal languages of expression through which her mind and body work in unison as a ‘thinking body’ to explore and express ideas. Through discussions, guided movement exercises and performing, she will share her methods and create a space for co-learning about the potentiality of movement as a tool for processing and communicating concepts.

Monday 20 June, 6.30 — Zoë Bastin

Zoë will share her dance research project, “Waves Are Disturbances”, which considers consent in romantic relationships through the movement of ocean waves. She will host a workshop that considers waves through creative writing, improvised movement scores and group reflections. These tasks will help us chip away at understanding how the natural phenomenon of waves can be used as philosophical material to solve emotional problems.

Through exploring intersections between dancing and physics, how can we better understand the movement patterns of ocean waves, how they can transform the body and what poetic potential this may have?

Monday 27 June, 6.30pm — Derrick Duan

Our body keeps the score: as we travel through time and space, the trauma we bear begins to embed in flesh. These marks, not always visible, slowly change the topography of the body: some heal, some harden, some sink deeper, shifting between layers of flesh and psyche.

Join Derrick for this session as they present an in-progress performance involving a safe yet evocative space for performers to confront an audience with discourses of personal trauma: immigration, identity, queerness, the anxiety of modern living. The performance will invite you to become immersed in sensation and participate through physical actions if desired, with the session ending in a group feedback discussion.


About On The Table:

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

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