On Sunday 30th April The Boys will be performing at the second last (ever) Conundrum.
Because many of the men in The Boys have an abundance of facial hair we are going to participate in the world’s greatest shave. Basically this means people will sponsor us to shave our beards and/or heads to help raise money for The Leukaemia Foundation of Australia.

Full details and online donations here.

If you want to come along on the night it’s at:

Cecil Street Studio,
66 Cecil Street, Fitzroy
7pm start, $8 entry

Also performing will be:

Regulars: Five Square Metres and State of Flux

Fabulous guests:

The Boys
Lyndesay Dresdon
Madeleine Flynn
Sally Smith

Photo of hairy men coming soon.

At the end of 2005 Jacob saw a short choreographed work made by two of his VCA students, Amber Haines and Lily Paskas. The work is called (may need to correct the spelling of this!) She Behebegeebee. We approached Amber and Lily with the idea of reworking the piece for a short film. Part of this process will involve inserting Jacob into the work and ‘butchering’ the choreography that Amber and Lily have already been developing.

We are currently writing a storyboard and finding locations. The shoot is planned for the end of Sept.

Conundrum will be celebrating both it’s 10th anniversary and it’s final show on May 28th.

Because there are only 120 or so seats at Dancehouse you will need to book. It’s going to be a good one!

Dancehouse (03) 9347 2860

The venue of choice has now changed – Conundrum will be ending it’s days at:

Cecil Street Studio,
66 Cecil Street, Fitzroy
7pm start, $10 entry

It’s been 10 good years and we’re bloody excited to have made it this far.  There are very few ongoing forums for improvisational practice that have lasted 10 years.  Look out for the full list of people who have performed in Conundrum over the last decade.

In April David and Jacob will be performing as part of the Making Contact season at Dancehouse.

From the Dancehouse website:

An international contact improvisation collaboration, featuring Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood (Canada), Judit Keri (Hungary), David Corbet (VIC) and Jacob Lehrer (VIC), with live sound by Rae Howell (Sunwrae Ensemble) and Tamil Rogeon.

Dates: April 26-30, 2006
Tickets: Member $15, non-member $20
Venue: Dancehouse, 150 Princes St, North Carlton VIC
Bookings: 03 9347 2860 or info@dancehouse.com.au

There is now some footage on the Media pages from this performance season. We were also given a review in InPress magazine by Stephanie Glickman.

REVIEW
Making Contact
Where and when: Dancehouse, 26-30 April
Reviewer: Stephanie Glickman

This collaborative dance performance event was the culmination of a residency of four leading contact improvisation dancers. Two of these, David Corbet and Jacob Lehrer live and work in Melbourne, while the others, Andrew Harwood and Judit Keri hail from Canada and Hungary, respectively. Contact improvisation is a dance technique that builds movement sequences by using multiple bodies to give and take weight, release into and out of the floor and create infinite kineasthetic interactions. Music, lighting and text can play important roles in building material.

The highly experienced quartet, joined by Alies Sluiter, an improvising violinist, and Rae Howell, a piano and vibraphone player, built a well-developed exploration on Sunday night. Movable wooden panels created multiple ways to divide and arrange the space, building some of the most interesting and dynamic moments in the performance. Initially placed in a straight line up the back of the space, they eventually became everything from hiding places to partitions between duets and opening and closing doors.

Being improvisation, each performance has a very different feel. In this one, the dancers played off distinct personalities. Harwood emerged as the mentor, often telling the Australian boys to be careful with their rambunctious maneuvers. Keri spoke directly to the audience, telling us what Harwood was aiming for artistically while Corbet and Lehrer’s contributions ran the gamut of tender, confused, funny and beautiful movement. While a sense of individuality of dancers emerged, the crucial essence of working as an ensemble was never lost. The musicians were sensitive to the actions and built in sounds that both responded to the physicalizations around them, but also provided much aural scope for the quartet to work with. At points, Keri joined Sluiter and Howell, adding her own verbal contributions.

Often used as an experiential practice or to generate choreography, contact improvisation is a difficult movement form to make into engaging extended performance in its own rite. These artists managed to do that, testament to both their on-going dedication to the form and the three weeks resourced by Dancehouse to allow such in-depth analysis.

I’ve just finished a week at the National Library of Australia. I’ve been working in the Music and Dance branch of the library and more specifically working with a collection of video material contributed to the Library by Meryl Tankard.

This project has been part of a new Ausdance Fellowship, aimed at assisting dance researchers to visit Canberra and access the collections. Originally Shona Erskine was to spend a fortnight working with Dance Curator Dr Michelle Potter, as a pilot fellowship, but couldn’t continue with the project.

As the National Library doesn’t house dance video materials part of the project has been to begin devising some strategies and proposals for dealing with moving image information. When I’ve finished I’ll post the information I put together for access/development/information! It’s been a great week and i’ve covered a lot of ground – it’s been a little overwhelming. Great to have access to the materials here as well.

You can download the final documents I wrote here:

dance video acquisitions – Word Doc
data sheet demo – Excel spreadsheet

If these are of any use to you please feel free to use them but let me know what you’re doing.
David

We’ve just finished the second week of our three week residency at the Meat Market in North Melboure.

As part of our practice we performed each night from Tues – Sat at 5.30pm

These performances were a chance for us to be observed in our process and also to have discussion with the people who came afterwards. More details on this soon.

On the Wednesday we worked with photographer George Kyriacou. Some of the images he captured are below. Click on an image for a larger version. If you are using a recent browser (get Firefox) clicking an image will open it in the lightbox. You’ll be able to browse the images using your keyboard, [P]revious image, [N]ext image, e[X]it.

Supported by Arts House developed in the Culture LAB

David and Jacob will perform at The Little Con, a night of improvised dance, at Cecil St Studio on Sunday 12th February. They will be performing a 30 minute work focussing on overlapping duets with Joey Lehrer and Paul Romano. Also performing in other works on the night will be Ann-maree Ellis, Dianne Reid and Anne O’Keeffe.
The Little Con is on the second Sunday of the month at 6.30pm at Cecil Street Studio, 66 Cecil Street, Fitzroy.

David and Jacob applied for a residency through the new Culture Lab creative development initiative at the end of 2005. They were successful in their application and will be using the residency to continue their working practise and begin forming ideas for a new work.

The first week of the residency is from Jan 9 – 15, 2006. This week will be used for reconnecting with material and forms from their previous work Excavate, as well as continuing their training regime.

The second week of the residency is from Feb 20 – 26, 2006. During this week there will be a daily showing (except Sun) at 5.30pm, 7 Blackwood St, Nth Melb.

Supported by Arts House developed in the Culture LAB

We performed with Invention in Time, Ariel Valent and Kate Adam, at The Boite World Music Cafe. They played two sets with five songs in each and we danced to two in the first and three in the second. Louis Porter projected photos during the night. The audience was warm and the night was well received.