Abbotsford Convent

Welcome to 'Future City Inflatable', an imaginary landscape formed by all who inhabit it. Both immersive and spectacular, 'Future City Inflatable' is the nostalgic rediscovery of past architectural speculations of future utopias and dystopias. In this durational dance piece, Davies and Heyward look to the experimental and radical architecture movements of the 1960s and 1970s, using choreography to transform these unmade designs into living processes for growth, change, caution and fantasy.

Performers and viewers are transported through a hypothetical superstructure that re-configures the present and suggests alternative structures of intra-action. As we hurtle ahead at an increasingly rapid and unbalanced pace, 'Future City Inflatable' takes time to look back, to make space for going on differently.

#futurecityinflatable

About the Artists

Ellen Davies and Alice Heyward have been dancing with each other since 2007. Their long friendship has seen them work in dance as collaborators, in collective situations, individually on solo projects, and in the processes of others. They share interests in the relationship between imagination and movement, the production of subjectivity, and non-linear temporalities.

Ellen works regularly as a performer for choreographic artists. She has presented her own work in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, at Counihan Gallery Brunswick, and contributed writing to the Countess Report and This Container. Currently Ellen is interested in the social and cultural constructs of western-based dance performance practices, a history irremovable from the formation of her self-identity.

Alice is an ongoing resident at Kunsthaus KuLe, Berlin. Her works are presented at Dancehouse (Keir Choreographic Award), Murray White Room, Uferstudios and Sophiensaele. Her writing is published in the Dancehouse Diary, Performance Paradigm, Viereinhalbsaetze and This Container. Alice is a danceWEB scholarship recipient at ImPulsTanz, Vienna. Curiosities about memory and transmission, situating artistic practice in human experience, drive her work.

Credits

Choreography
Ellen Davies and Alice Heyward

Performance
Lydia Connolly-Hiatt, Megan Payne, Geoffrey Watson, Ivey Wawn, Ellen Davies, Alice Heyward

Music
Daniel Jenatsch

Costume
Verity Mackey

Lighting
Amelia Lever-Davidson

Mentor/Dramaturge
Shelley Lasica

Text
Deborah May Birch

Video
Elena Betros

Photography
Jacqui Shelton

Images
Cello_europe and Navot Miller (photography), Charlie Freedman (design)

This performance is in memory of Jonquil Mackey.

Acknowledgement

'Future City Inflatable' is a Next Wave x Dancehouse co-commission and has been assisted by the Australian Government through Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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