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!

On The Table #1 (March — June 2024)

Monday 25 March, 6pm – Reuben Macdougall Di Manno

Join Reuben in exploring improvisational structures, with a focus on rule-based scores (written provocations to guide movement). He will lead us in exercises of writing scores and layering these on top of each other with some scores taking precedence over others. How can we find joy and surprising creations from the inevitable contradictions that arise in combining scores?

Monday 1 April, 6pm – Holly Rowan

Holly has a background in both dance practice and clowning. Join them in exploring ways of cross-pollinating these practices. The session will start with a mixture of ensemble games, movement improvisations and basic clown technique. We’ll then learn some ensemble movement phrases and experiment with methods for injecting the material with silliness through failure, deviance and child-like play.

Monday 8 April, 6pm – Caitlin Dear

Caitin will host an ‘Open Reading Space’; a mini-laboratory for experimental and embodied reading praxis. You’ll walk into a modular room, scattered with books and texts, as well as ‘reading scores’ (written provocations for explorative reading). Caitlin will lead a few exercises to get us started, then we’ll spend time using an ‘open space’ format to read/discuss/embody/move/write/underwrite/rewrite the textual materials.

Monday 15 April, 6pm – Joy Zhou

Joy Zhou is a trans-disciplinary artist and design practitioner. They have an ongoing investigation into transmuting norms with queering gestures, to amplify unnoticed existence in everyday life. They will present a sound-making device that is in-development for an upcoming show. Using this device, contact microphones and our bodies, we’ll rethink our relationship with the built environment that our everyday experiences are affected by.

Monday 22 April, 6pm – Rebecca Jensen & Siobhan McKenna

Rebecca and Siobahn have recently discovered a mutual love for singing and have started to build a singing practice together exploring celtic singing, karaoke, choirs and more. This session is in invitation to sing together and participate in their exploration in composing parts for a choir with a celtic inclination. Siobahn and Bec are dancers/choreographers, not singers, but use their skill sets to learn and embody different vocal techniques. All who are willing to sing are welcome!

Monday 29 April , 6pm – Karlia Cook

Dance artist Karlia Cook will share an evolving research process exploring interplays of writing and dancing. We will play with embodied writing, and examine dancing as a kinaesthetic act that responds to the archived materiality of words to inform and lead the body into movement. This methodology, known as dancewriting, occupies the hyper-kinetic force of words on the page, enabling the dance to begin from a place of embodied enquiry that invites the listening body to be alive in words and the dancing.

Monday 6 May , 6pm – Alec Katsourakis

Alec will share his project “μάτι” (mati, meaning ‘eye’ in Greek), a choreographic experiment that delves into the role of the gaze in dance practice and performance. He will share choreographic games involving movement and live-capture technology that have the gaze as the central focus. We’ll play with switching between the roles of ‘watchers’ and ‘the watched’ in a playful environment.

Monday 13 May , 6pm – Alison Pyrke & Jaslyn Robertson

Jaslyn Robertson & Alison Pyrke introduce their new project Shoe Tunes, an interdisciplinary experiment in creating footwear as instruments. Shoe Tunes is an open ended project within an early phase of development, beginning with functional propositions and rudimentary experiments. The duo seeks an audience for both their feedback and their potential involvement in the project.

Monday 20 May, 6pm – Lachlan Purcell & Olivia De Bono Abbott

This session will consider the role of artists and art on social media. Bringing together artists of different disciplines, this investigation will combine workshop and discussion with the intention of fostering new cultural practices. Lachlan and Olivia will present a participatory performance, lead exercises and host a closing discussion.

Monday 10 June, 6pm – Manasa Visakai

Manasa will lead a workshop in exploring concepts through the movement language of house dance. We’ll start with some house basics, before moving onto conceptual explorations together, and finishing with some freestyle practice.

Monday 17 June, 6pm – Adam Naughton

Adam is a choreographer and dance artist researcher from Aotearoa NZ who works with written scores to create site-responsive performance involving co-extensive relationships with the more-than-human. He wiIl lead us through a workshop in moving with underground fungal networks and embodying mycelium, cells and bacteria. We’ll create scores through a process of iteration and experimentation of using poetics, objects and sound to germinate movement prompts and choreography.

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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