Just over three weeks to go until opening night and everything has swung into overdrive! I will be posted more DUST-related media on the site as it becomes available, so watch this space! And thanks for the lovely comments 
However, if you do want to see the whole thing in its entirety, you’ll have to come to the show!
In the meantime, check us out on the Dancehouse website http://www.dancehouse.com.au/performance/performancedetails.php?id=89 with a shiny new picture!
well, less than four weeks to go until opening night and what a crazy time we’re having! Fantastic Terry has worked hard for me on another track, this time for a horror dreamscape, and I am hectic shooting various footage of everything from mine sites to people doing the grapevine while throwing fake money in the air, to me spreading icing on a cake. It’s definitely going to be a wild ride!
It occurs to me that, being so close to opening, that means that ticket sales have also opened. So now is the time to get online or on the phone and get your tix! www.melbournefringe.com.au or 9660 9666.
See you there!
It is incredibly difficult to find men to be in anything. Either they already have a job, in which case you have to go to non-dancers, which actually is not a problem, but most of the ‘normal’ men out there surprisingly enough are not willing to make fools of themselves on camera. Sigh.
So if there happen to be any men in Canberra reading this who would love to do a short film shoot on Friday night 6-8pm pretending to be board members laughing about how much money they’re making and being bought a thank you beer, please please please let me know. Or if anybody knows anyone. Just on the off chance.
Currently at Soft Landing 2 working under the mentorship of Brian Lucas on site specific work around the NewActon area. Besides the freezing temperatures and seemingly alternate wind and rain, it all seems to be going quite well.
But things are pretty hectic right now because of being involved in a full time process AND also working on DUST. It’s a great challenge but kind of terrifying at the same time. QL2 Centre for Youth Dance, where Soft Landing is held, have been kind enough to give me a space grant so I’m recommencing rehearsals tonight in their lovely studio.
The piece seems to be coming together, at least in my head. I’m fortunate in that I have left myself a lot of time to mull over it so I’ve been rearranging it a lot in my head, but yet to actually run it! There are a lot of disparate elements of sound, video, movement, scripting etc. so it feels a bit of a mammoth task to pull it all together. Hopefully it’ll all come through!
Wish me luck
First, a big thank you to excellent Leeke Griffin for coming in on Tuesday, much appreciated! It was great to have her in the studio trying out some ideas that I wasn’t sure about. Seeing them from a distance gave me a really clear perspective and allowed me to figure out whether or not they worked. The whole order of the piece has changed now and I’ve cut a fair whack, which I think is for the better. So thank you Leeke!
In other news, I am speaking today at my old high school, North Sydney Girls’, about the importance of a broad, open approach in both education and life. I’ll be showing some of my past works as well. Stay tuned, I’ll let you know how it goes. May the next generation be inspired!
More Coal Mines Fantastic Mr Terry has made me this remix of samples I’ve collected of different people’s thoughts on coal mines in their areas. I’m going to make a video to the track and it will open DUST as an interesting way to provide some context to what the audience is about to see.
I have a new appreciation for people who work from home or by themselves. It’s very difficult.
When I was making Exposure it was the best of everything because I could make the decisions I wanted to make, but still had the support of other people to give me ideas and slight pressure by waiting on what I was going to do.
This time, it really is just me, and I’m feeling it. The greatest uncertainty is wondering if anything actually works because it’s difficult to step outside and watch. Even on camera it’s not the same. The other thing is retaining the motivation to drag myself into the studio or office day after day to battle it out with myself.
In a lot of ways this is becoming intertwined with the work. DUST is about a woman willingly trapped within her own house, and I feel like I’m willingly trapped within this process. I’ve stopped telling people what is going on and I don’t think anyone really has an idea what’s going to happen in this piece, with the exception of anyone reading this blog.
If anyone’s in Sydney and wants to come into the studio, contact me and i’ll give you a list of times. Uh oh this could be very dangerous
Power is one of the most difficult problems of our time, behind, say, water. Renewable energy is ideal, but it will take years before we can get our hands on the technology necessary to obtain enough energy from each of these sources. We could, however, replace all the dirty (or, supposedly, ‘clean’) coal power stations in Australia with just over 50 nuclear reactors, but a lot of people are opposed to that.
The problem is that a single coal mine uses roughly the amount of water of a large regional town in order to wash down the coal it extracts, as well as contaminating the water supply. When burnt, the amount of coal pulled out of a single mine in a year equals more than the amount of fossil fuel emissions from all of NSW’s cars in the same time frame. The biggest joke is that most of our black coal is exported, where in some third world economies it is used to power steel mills, the products of which are sold back to Australia while we continue to pretend to be lowering our emissions.
The biggest shock to me is that as we have a Federal election fast approaching, neither side is even talking about these issues. Labor has issued a statement about somehow regulating coal power stations to ensure cleaner power (which is quite hard when you’re burning black stuff) and the Coalition has me-tooed them as usual, but it’s been kept fairly quiet in the face of the terror that is rising grocery prices.
If our farmers aren’t protected from this abomination, we won’t have groceries to worry about.
Wow, what an unprecedented political outburst. I’ll go back to making my dance piece about this
I am working on developing relationships with these cardboard signs. It’s pretty funny when you’re in a huge room alone, surrounded by cardboard signs and having meaningful relationships with them. One of them is particularly shady, and I think another likes me a little too much. Others are quite rude.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how other people would react to someone talking to blank cardboard outside of a dramatic context.
The other day I was in the studio, rain absolutely hammering down on the metal roof. I was practising a particular part where I move my arm to and fro from the elbow jerkily. I was doing this over and over again until I realised that peeking around the curtain was a very scared man who eventually introduced himself as the plumber whoops. He looked positively dismayed when he had to come back again!
Hopefully all this weirdness will pay off! I will post a video after next rehearsal so you can see what I’m talking about.
Ah yes, that terrifying beast that lies in wait for me whenever I enter an empty studio. It’s hard enough when you’ve got two other people waiting on you to say something, but when it’s just you it can get a bit crazy. Especially when, against your better judgement, you booked 3 hour blocks. Such is DUST – the story so far.
Today I thought perhaps it would be better if I took in some of my set elements. These include a bucketload of coal, cardboard signs of various sizes and a wooden box. For the next three hours I made huge balanced structures out of this rigid cardboard, pretended to be an excavator and had a tea party with two of the signs.
If this sounds like you let me know!
It may be daunting working on your own, but it can also be fun and hopefully this will lead to some really… interesting material.
