‘Dancers Speak Volumes’ is an exciting new production merging spoken word with dance, featuring three short dance pieces that use text to connect with the audience. OUTinPerth had a chat to dancer and choreographer Brooke Leeder about the show.
One of the short dance pieces was created by Leeder and is entitled ‘Not Even New York’. It’s based on her experiences travelling.
“‘Not Even New York’ was inspired by my first trip to London. I spent three weeks alone in London and I found that the only thing that I was saying was ‘sorry’ as I was walking down Oxford Street, bumping into people going and going ‘sorry’, ‘sorry’, ‘Sorry!’. So it’s really about that lack of communication. It just looks at the ways that you actually communicate with one another, whether it be minimal or a lengthy conversation.” she says.
The piece uses the word ‘sorry’ as punctuation in the choreography, using a real-life situation that is universally familiar as the basis for the dance, Leeder explains. “We have what is called ‘The Sorry Dance’, so the movement that I was experiencing walking down Oxford Street, hitting people on the shoulder, the movement would start from there, and the only words that we’re saying are ‘sorry’. We started with that and then it developed into how people meet while travelling, the ways that people do talk and not talk at the same time, to actually see this intensely busy tube, where we’re in such proximity but we don’t actually speak to one another. But then in certain times when it’s later at night and maybe people have had a couple of drinks that’s when people are more comfortable to talk to one another. ”
Leeder tells us how the inclusion of spoken word has made for a new and exciting take on choreography, for both her and the other choreographers, Louise Honeybul and Linton Aberle. “It’s really quite interesting. It’s the first time that I’ve done that. I just think within the context of the piece I really wanted to make the piece very accessible, really for people to understand and simply I thought just to use text helps break that down for the audience. And both works, Linton and Louise’s piece as well, they do a similar thing where as performers they talk to one another onstage, and then at certain points there’s actually delivered a short, say, monologue to the audience so you’re connecting to your performer and also then connecting directly to the audience as well through text.
“And being a theatre festival, I think these works are pitched at the perfect audience to get that theatregoing audience, and a way to connect with them through movement as well as text. I just thought this would be the perfect opportunity to reach that wider audience.”
‘Dancers Speak Volumes’ is playing at the Subiaco Arts Centre from the 19th to the 22nd and March.
Book tickets at ticketek.com.au
Sophie Joske
Image: Katherine McLeod
