Program
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Body of Work + QWERTY
Presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy
In 2014, Atlanta Eke’s “Body of Work” stunned audiences with its technical mastery, offering up a vision of future in which time collapses, and the physical body and its digital simulations collide and consume one another. Created in collaboration with video artists RDYSTDY and composer Daniel Jenatsch, this ground-breaking work imagined an end to the distinction between human and machine, questioning who choreographs and who is choreographed.
In 2023, they return to make a sequel, of sorts: “QWERTY” — a new work exploring the footprint technologies have made on the human body, and our capacity to rewrite our choreographic coding. Experimenting with interior and exterior interfaces and notions of path dependency, “QWERTY” probes the capability of the dancing body to break free of its pre-installed design.
Presented together as a double bill, “Body of Work” and “QWERTY” offer two spellbinding commentaries on the relationship between the human body and technology, in an evening of stunning visuals and innovative possibilities.
Post-show talk: Friday 24 March, 7.30pm
Credits
Choreographer and Performer: Atlanta Eke
Video Artists Projection Design: RDYSTDY Hana Miller and Jacob Perkins
Music Composition: Daniel Jenatsch
Lighting Design: Matthew Adey
Image credits: “Body of Work” (2022), Atlanta Eke. Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti
View Artist Biographies
Atlanta Eke is an award winning dancer and choreographer concerned with dissolving pre-existing perceptions and expectations by changing fixed representations of the body through movement. For over a decade she has presented her work nationally at Dancehouse, ACCA, NGV (Melbourne), Carriageworks (SYD), MONA (Hobart), Adelaide Festival among many others. She has toured internationally to Performance Space New York/PS122 (US), Tempo Festival (NZ), MDT (Stockholm), Fierce Festival (Birmingham UK), Les Plateuax Briquetterie (Paris), Bassano Del Grappa (Italy) to name a few. Atlanta works with and beyond the limitations of the body, in collaboration with artists in a variety of contexts. Her work with dance is currently project specific; within each project a question for the next arises, alongside an effort to deconstruct the modes of production and presentation of the previous work.
Artists Hana Miller and Jacob Perkins are founders of RDYSTDY, an independent production studio based in Melbourne (Aus) and Wellington (NZ). Working in the expanded field of the moving image, RDYSTDY has three departments: Art, Film & TV, Commercial. Recent art works include UNARCHIVAL, in development with Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand; short film SOURSWEET in collaboration with Victoria Chiu and premiered at Dance (Lens) Festival; Centre for New Geography commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria with Victoria Chiu, Raina Petersen, Katina Olsen, Kristina Chan and Nebahat Erpolat. Past collaborations include animatronic puppets for Disney, Cirque and Wynn Casinos with kinetic theatre company Michael Curry Design; Keir Choreographic Award winning Body of Work with Atlanta Eke; The Unsettling with Atlanta Eke and Ghenoa Gela; Genetrix with Victoria Chiu, Rudi van der Merwe, and Joszef Trefeli; Biometric Mirror with Mindy Meng Wang and Niels Wouters; AS IS with Lisa Walker. RDYSTDY has mounted installations and performances at Carriageworks, MONA, Dark Mofo, SPLORE, Soundstage, the National, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, NExT Lab Melbourne School of Design, Dance Massive, Adelaide International Arts Festival, Tempo (NZ), Les Plateaux in Paris and Coil Festival in NYC.
Daniel Jenatsch is an award winning artist and composer, living and working on the lands Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung People of the Kulin Nation, Melbourne, Australia. His work looks at the social construction of subjectivity with a concern for the ways that knowledge and power construct and inform our social and mental ecologies. Daniel’s work combines hyper-detailed soundscapes, music, text and video to create multi-media documentaries, video-games installations, radio pieces and performances.
Partners
“QWERTY” has been supported through the Chunky Move and Warrnambool Art Gallery (WAG) Victoria Regional Artists Residency, Geelong Performing Arts Centre: Creative Engine, and Creative New Zealand.