The Bill #2
Two for Now and Olivia Millard
The Bill extends the improvised performance realm through the sensibilities of Contact Improvisation.
A monthly platform curated by Two for Now (Emily Bowman and Joey Lehrer) and dedicated to dance improvisation performance where moments of high exposure and fleeting visibility are caught in the flow of spontaneous production.
At each event, an established guest or group is invited to perform in a double bill alongside Two for Now, for a duration of up to 30 minutes each, followed by an Artist Chat.
The Bill #2 brings together Olivia Millard, Joey Lehrer, and Emily Bowman to dance and chat about their respective practices. They are invited to think about how an ongoing practice is revealed/explored in the present of performance.
Read more about The Bill >>
Curator: Two for Now (Emily Bowman and Joey Lehrer)
Collaborators/Performers: Emily Bowman, Joey Lehrer, and Olivia Millard
Sound artist: Victor Renolds
Facilitator: Dr Katie Lee
Two for Now:
Emily Bowman and Joey Lehrer are an improvisational duo [ two for now ]. They have been dancing, researching, teaching, performing and documenting their Contact Improvisation (CI) collaborations together, for the past decade. Between them, they have collectively over three decades worth of CI experience.
Their practice has been supported by various prestigious national grants as well as residencies for performance research such as Tasdance (2017), Bundanon Trust (2018), Strut dance SEED (2018), Dancehouse Artist Cut (2019) and Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographers Program (2021). In 2022, they presented their first full-length collaborative improvisational work titled Weathering as part of Dancehouse’s Season Two program.
As individuals, Emily and Joey have taught and performed CI extensively across Australia, as well as around the world (New Zealand, Malaysia, Germany, United States, Canada, India, Japan). They are respected practitioners of the CI form and key contributors to the Australian CI community. Emily is currently undertaking practice-led research (PhD) at Deakin University, which involves researching and performing CI with Joey.
Guest Artist: Olivia Millard
Olivia worked as a lecturer in contemporary dance at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, (Edith Cowan University) from 1999-2006 and has been working at Deakin University since 2007. Her current role at Deakin is Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance. Olivia completed her PhD at Deakin in 2013. She has received grants to create twelve works as an independent dance maker and was commissioned to create works for Buzz Dance Theatre, STEPS Youth Dance Company, Link Dance Company, WAAPA, Deakin University and the Asia Young Choreographers’ project in Taiwan. Olivia’s current research projects are various collaborative projects centred around improvisation in dance performance including AllPlay Dance which supports inclusion in dance activities for children with disability.
Facilitator: Dr Katie Lee.
Katie Lee’s creative practice includes sculpture, installation, performance, video, and image-making. In her artworks, she concentrates on the affordances of materials, making visible fleeting moments, compositions and constellations between objects, bodies, and materials in space. Through her work, Lee is interested in revealing and dissecting un/stable relations along with conscious and subconscious associations held within materials, architecture, bodies and forms. Katie Lee is based in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia where she completed a PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2019). She has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 2005 and is a lecturer in Creative Arts at Deakin University.
Sound Artist: Victor Renolds.
With a background in the 80’s Perth alternative music scene, Victor Renolds has created original sound, music and multimedia for the works of contemporary choreographers, theatre practitioners and other multi-disciplinary art-forms since 1989. These collaborations have seen his music, soundscape and interactive multimedia creations (dis)played in Amsterdam, Darwin, Kaohsiung, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris and Perth.