Her major solo productions MOVEMENT ON THE EDGE (1988-89), ANOTHER DUST (1989-92) IS and IS.2 (1994-95) and NERVE 9 (2001 onwards) have toured extensively in both Europe and Australia while a series of performance works done over 5 years in the ancient dry lake bed of Mungo (far western New South Wales) were the beginnings of her work in the Australian Outback. She has initiated a longterm exchange entitled EMBRACE betweeen Indian and Australian artists and is director of the TRIPLE ALICE Forum & Laboratories which brings together interdisciplinary practices of artists, scientists and thinkers in relation to the Central Desert of Australia - www.triplealice.net

Her teaching and performance practice in different terrains – from city to desert – around the world has engendered a series of works concerned with inhabitation and the nature of place. Besides her improvisational work with musicians and visual artists, her main emphasis is on intercultural, site-specific and durational performances.

Since introducing the BODYWEATHER philosophy and methodology into Australia in 1989, Tess has engendered an extensive teaching and performance practice that has had a far reaching influence on numerous practitioners within the performing arts field in both Australia and abroad. In 2000 Tess formed DE QUINCEY CO which is Australia’s leading BodyWeather company, presenting a range of dance-performance works and interactive environments in metropolitan and outback areas. Works have ranged from THE SCENT TRILOGY, a glamtrash series of interventions in nightclubs, through to the intense and  intimate suite of FIVE SHORT SOLOS in tiny, linked spaces, to DICTIONARY OF ATMOSPHERES drawing audiences a kilometer through the riverbed in Alice Springs; legendary site-specific work THE STIRRING led audiences through the newly opened CarriageWorks arts centre in Sydney, and recently RUN unfolded a gigantically scaled 3 ton sculptural performance engine as an enquiry into energy and motion.

BodyWeather is the basis of her work.

Media Quotes for Tess de Quincey

embrace: GUILT FRAME

…the 40-minute journey is as mesmerising as it is inexplicably profound. …the work is elegant, simple, complex, profound, stark, elsuive – yet never daunting. It is wonderfully easy to watch and very effecting. …a wonderful journey of shared discovery. Australian Stage – James Waites, March 2008.

…together they are mesmerising. The Australian – Deborah Jones, February 2008.

The two faces in front of you, scarcely moving, are plunging through a sea of emotions… drawing you into an intense 40 minutes of observation and response… It is something to see – and feel.

The Sydney Morning Herald – Jill Sykes, February 2008.

Performance Space Highlights of 21 years

…dancer Tess de Quincey’s surreal landscapes of the mind, written by her body across the building’s cavenous performing area… de Quincey’s barely perceptible movements built to such intensity that the space felt charged with electricity and some undefinable immutability and emotion.

The Sydney Morning Herald – Angela Bennie, November 2004.

Nerve 9

…Tess de Quincey is a formidable artist… her intense, many-layered, intricately worked creations where the body, decentred and edgey, negotiates the mutated, arcane landscape of contemporary culture… With Nerve 9 De Quincey and her collaborators have created an epitaph for our time.

The Age (Melbourne) – Vicki Fairfax, February 2002.

Tess de Quincey – extracts from solo reviews

Nerve 9

November 2005, Melbourne Stage – Hilary Crampton: Who are we, what are we without the gift of speech? How does speech become language? And how does language function as a tool of both power and oppression? All these questions emerge out of Tess de Quincey’s Nerve 9. This is an extraordinary performance… a powerful work built on serious intellectual content.  …awakening those feelings of shared but unacknowedged experiences by which we are able to empathise with others.

November 2005, The Age – Chloe Smethurst: …the work goes beyond the realm of the literal into the secret centre of being. Ultimately, Nerve 9 transcends language to present a vision of the subconscious, pre-language experiences of women.

October 2005, The Sydney Morning Herald – Jill Sykes: Nerve 9 is the peak of her incisive creativity.  Nerve 9 should not be missed.

September 2005, The Australian – Rita Clarke: It’s a film noire fusion for the eye, a tapestry for the ear and a banquet for the imagination. De Quincey’s poetic creation is more like Blake than Wordsworth. This is a work of art, painstakinghly put together and magnetically interesting.

February 2002, The Age (Melbourne) – Vicki Fairfax: … Tess de Quincey is a formidable artist… her intense, many-layered, intricately worked creations where the body, decentred and edgey, negotiates the mutated, arcane landscape of contemporary culture… With Nerve 9 De Quincey and her collaborators have created an epitaph for our time.

August-September 2001, Realtime 44 – Eleanor Brickhill:  …Stewart’s shimmering sonic and visual poetry and De Quincey’s enduringly watchable portraits of attenuated human frailty… has a depth and lucidity that is immensely readable and challenging… the flowering of a peculiarly acute register of human sensibility, the medium through which a person experiences the world.

June 2001, The Australian – Deborah Jones:  … a piece of such exquisite refinement… de Quincey and her collaborators in vision, sound, light and text (this is a true multimedia work) were on another plane altogether… intensely gripping… this sombre, challenging piece.

May 2001, The Sydney Morning Herald – Jill Sykes:  Engrossing kaleidoscope of dance, sight and sound… … an inspiringly integrated multi-art form presentation… an engrossing, ever-changing sequence of moods in dance, visuals and sound. … this spare yet richly layered presentation. …which makes this enigmatic way of seeing and hearing an exhilarating trigger to the imaginative senses.

Performance Space Highlights of 21 years

November 2004, The Sydney Morning Herald – Angela Bennie:  …dancer Tess de Quincey’s surreal landscapes of the mind, written by her body across the building’s carenous performing area… de Quincey’s barely perceptible movements built to such intensity that the space felt charged with electricity and some undefinable immutability and emotion.

Butoh Product #2 – Nerve

June-July 1999, Realtime – Edward Scheer:  …we have the bare material of language on display… a more powerful performance presence is hard to imagine and even without locomotive movment the pulses of the body’s capacities for movement are in evidence.

Document

June 1997, Alice Springs News – Kieran Finane:  This was a performance of exceptional potency.

September 1994, Kölner Stadtanzeiger (Cologne):  …working in opposition to conventional choreography and all traditions of bodily expression with emphasis, determination and also anger… to retrieve the directness of movement that usually fails at the barriers of stiffened dance grammar.  Even more radical… she deconstructed evey banal, familiar gesture. The self evidence in her repose, rhythms of moving and even the eye contact were left frozen by de Quincey, almost like a cocoon.

is

April 1994, The Australian – William Shoubridge:  An hour of masterly drawn movement and image where the pen never leaves the page… She has a presence and hieratic solemnity to her dancing that gives it the weight of a sibylline utterance, yet the work has a cool Euclidean logic in its geometry and layout… a body acted upon by deep and mysterious forces and her commanding expression resonates with those forces. It’s like dancing turned inside out, if you like, and it is rarely seen on an Australian stage.

Another Dust

May 1990, Art & Text – Sarah Miller:  Rigorously anti-humanistic in conception, de Quincey presented an alien body, the body as phenomena. The performer moving in space apppears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns. The act of performance, the experience, becomes primary. This chameleon body, perceived and rendered as a site of desire, displacement and fluctuation… The spectator too is required to relinquish his or her everyday mode of interpreting experience, for the performance through its rejection of representation and logical sequences in favour of the sensorial body and of a perceptual space, arouses and brings into view that which we commonly do not see.

Feb 1990, Sydney Morning Herald – Jill Sykes:  Mysterious and dramatic, grotesque and beautiful, Tess de Quincey’s latest solo has the power to draw her audience into another world. Its intensity is absolutely gripping, its interpretative depth a rich mine of possibilities… Another Dust is a theatrical experience which should not be missed.

Nov 1989, Information (Copenhagen) -  Monna Dithmer:  An ‘inbetween’ space arises, where personality, humanity and individuality lie and pulsate in an indefinite state…it is total deliverance which is danced. An uncompromising surrender which Tess de Quincey in a fascinating way manages to maintain throughtout the entire solo. A beautiful example of a Butoh dance which does not become an empty purely aesthetic style, but is a highly personal observation of Butoh’s expression and form. After a dance experience like this we can only ask for ‘another’.

Movement on the Edge

Oct 1988, Ballett-Journal Das Tanzarchiv (Cologne) – Kurt Peters:  Everything was endless with a maximum of intensity and a minimum of movement. There cannot be less movement to tell such a complex tragedy without words. Tess de Quincey was so powerful that she needed neither the light changes not the wire of the set for her ‘Movement on the Edge’.

SATURDAY 3 – SATURDAY 10 MARCH 2012

led by
visiting artist Frank van de Ven (Holland) and Tess de Quincey
at the REX CRAMPHORN STUDIO, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

This 8-day workshop will share and explore the heritage of images that were an integral part of BodyWeather training and performances within MAI-JUKU, Min Tanaka’s performance group in Japan. Both Frank and Tess were dancers with Mai-Juku from 1984 til 1991. This will be the time either artist will teach these images.

Images were a key choreographic method for the company. Through the construction of precise and varied environments, infinite layers of relationship were explored through the body and the mind, enabling physics to meet poetry. Besides a rigorous introduction to the images and methods of practice, the workshop will also encourage the development of individual images developed by participants for use in contemporary performance.

We plan to include a short performance by participants of the 8-day workshop as part of PLATFORM 4, an evening of performances to be presented at FRASERSTUDIOS on Saturday 10 March which will act as a culmination of this process.

INFORMATION & BOOKINGS

Working hours will be 9.30am – 4.30pm each day excepting Saturday 10 March which will be detailed at the workshop.

We can offer two tiers of participation, either:
2-DAY INTRO:  Sat 3 and Sun 4 March; Price $220, Early Bird by 20 Jan $170
8-DAY INTENSIVE:  From Sat 3 until Saturday 10 March; Price $590, Early Bird by 20 Jan $450

BOOKINGS are essential as places are limited so please register as soon as possible to ensure your place on the workshop. Register by sending full payment (details below), your contact details and a brief biography including any previous injuries to admin@DeQuinceyCo.net. Once we have received your details and full payment you will receive a confirmation of your place.

To make full payment please select your level of participation and then click on book now:

Select Intro or Intensive

2-Day Intro paid after 20 Jan – $220.00 AUD 8 Day Intensive paid after 20 Jan – $590.00 AUD

For details of access to the studio, please see the map below.

dancers FRANK VAN DE VEN (Amsterdam), TESS DE QUINCEY, PETER FRASER, VICTORIA HUNT, LINDA LUKE and the B-I MOB; sound artists/musicians JIM DENLEY & RISHIN SINGH; video MARTIN FOX; lighting EMMA LOCKHART-WILSON

SATURDAY 10 MARCH at 7pm
FraserStudios
10-14 Kensington St,
Chippendale

$10 donation at the door

After the success of previous PLATFORMS in 2010 and 2011, The Weather Exchange are proud to bring you another fabulous selection of artists in a program curated by Tess de Quincey.

Season Details

Performance Space

at Carriageworks
4-12 May, 2008

———————————————————————————————-

Research & Development Stages

Stage One – research Performance Space residency, Carriageworks October 2007

Working with artists Barbara Campbell, Roses Tikitiki Hunt, Keren Ruki and Sarah Waterson. This skilled team of artists are utilising movement, storytelling and colonial artefacts (specifically Hinemihi, the ancestral meeting house sold to a British noble in 1892) to develop the performance.

Stage Two – creative development Sydney and Aotearoa June-July 2008

Conceptual & choreographic research with artist Barbara Campbell at Te Wairoa, Rotorua will include a Te Arawa communities, principally Touhourangi sub-tribe who are connected through genealogy to Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito.

Stage Three – public discussion Performance Space, Sydney September 2008

public discussion presenting research and development process as part of Performance Space Festival for Live Arts.

Stage Four – 100 Cloaks Gone Before Dawn (link), Feb-March 2009

Stage Five – public performance at Kiss Club, Bill & George, Sydney 2009

Stage Six – public performance at Kiss Club incubator, Club House Performance Space,  2009

Stage Seven – Dancing the Dead (link), Nov 2010

Stage Eight – Hinemihi Haka, Ausdance residency, Fraser St Studios, June 2011

Stage Nine – Lighting Thresholds (link), July- Aug 2011

Stage Ten – research Rex Cramphorn, University of Sydney residency, Copper Promises: Maro, Dec 2011

In 2012, two IMPRO-EXCHANGE ‘12 laboratories will take place 30 August -1 September and 29 November – 1 December at Critical Path. Expressions of Interest via Critical Path are invited from dancers interested to participate in and collaborate over each of the labs as a process of professsional development. Public performances may be planned as culminative outcomes of each laboratory.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE is a process of intensive laboratories and public performances which aims to explore the nature of improvisation between dancers from different backgrounds, ages and traditions. It also aims to generate a forum of dialogue, exchange and discussion around strategies and processes of improvisation. Facilitated usually by Tess de Quincey in collaboration with Martin del Amo, each lab is intricately structured, has a specific focus (eg energy, motif, space, composition) which links and accumulates the experiences of previous labs.

As an ongoing project, IMPRO-EXCHANGE explores what can be instantly created between different traditions of dance – with different working practices and considerations. For example: What’s the point of moving? How and when will we make choices? What strategies emerge as a result of that? How do we compose through time? Can we maintain vulnerability and experimentation in front of an audience?

As part of each lab we generally include an improvisation for invited audience which is grounded in the exchange of observation and feedback. These performances have often included a specific relationship, 2006 being a 1-hour interdisciplinary exploration, 2007 an open-ended site relationship, 2009 a 2-hr durational performance,  2010 a 2-hr durational performance followed by a 1-hr performance and in 2011 a one hour performance. These performances are an extension of the observation and feedback that is inherent within the planned structure of each lab and which is an integral aspect of BodyWeather, the formative practice underlying the structuring of Impro-Exchange.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2011-2

“Cubic Space – Internal & External”, 24-26 November with dancers Narelle Benjamin, Sofie Burgoyne, Alice Cummins, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Ryuichi Fujimura, Maya Gavish, Raghav Handa, Nikki Heywood, Nick Keys, Kirsty Kiloh, Lian Loke, Linda Luke, Caterina Mocciola, Katina Olsen, Kathryn Puie and Miranda Wheen.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2011-1

“Cubic Space – Physics & The Imagination”, 12-14 May with dancers Narelle Benjamin, Sarah Black, Alice Cummins, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Peter Fraser, Raghav Handa,  Gareth Hart, Nikki Heywood, WeiZen Ho, Victoria Hunt, Kirsty Kiloh, Linda Luke, Jeremy Neideck, Katina Olsen, Ellen Riis and Vicki van Hout.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2010-3

“Composition”, 2-4 December with dancers Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Ryuichi Fujimura, Kirsty Kiloh, Linda Luke, Shaun McLeod, Venettia Millar, Latai Taumoepeau and Vicki van Hout.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2010-2

“Energy & Structure”, 4-6 November with dancers Narelle Benjamin, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Peter Fraser, Ryuichi Fujimura, Kirsty Kiloh, Kathryn Puie, Alan Schacher, Nancy Wijohn.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2010-1

“Space & Time”, 20-22 May with dancers Narelle Benjamin, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Ryuichi Fujimura, Alexandra Harrison, Mark Hill, WeiZen Ho, Victoria Hunt, Lian Loke, Linda Luke, Annalouise Paul, Latai Taumoepeau.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2009

26-28 February
dancers Narelle Benjamin, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal,  Peter Fraser, Ryuichi Fujimura, Ghenoa Geia, Lian Loke, Linda Luke, Ahil Ratnamohan, Alan Schacher and Vicki Van Hout.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2007

“An Improvisation Engine”, 19-21 November led by Oguri with dancers Henrietta Baird, Narelle Benjamin, Tom Davies, Martin del Amo, T J Eckleberg, Janie Gibson, Nikki Heywood, Victoria Hunt, Kirsty Kiloh, Lian Loke, Linda Luke, Lee Pemberton.

IMPRO-EXCHANGE 2006

11 & 18 & 19 November with 26 dancers & musicians
dancers Narelle Benjamin, Tom Davies, Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo, Peter Fraser, Alexandra Harrison, Kristina Harrison, Victoria Hunt, Linda Luke, Lizzie Thomson, Yumi Umiumare, Bernadette Walong, Tony Yap.
musicians Chris Abrahams, Karen Booth, Monica Brooks, Clare Cooper, Jim Denley, Rosie Dennis, Dale Gorfinkel, Sachiko M, Emily Morandini, Michael Sheridan, Amanda Stewart, Clayton Thomas, Ami Yoshida.

These laboratories have been funded by Critical Path, an organisation dedicated to the development of dance in NSW, and supported by Performance Space in 2010; they are also assisted by De Quincey Co through THE WEATHER EXCHANGE, an initiative supporting the development of artists based in BodyWeather and related disciplines.

I imagine our first forays as humans onto water occurred on rafts. And stepping onto water also enabled us to walk out of Africa. As humans we carry memory besides imaginings for a future, connecting the physical and the spiritual world with the capacity to change. I hope you will feel danced by a journey that articulates and connects different beings, vertically through time and horizontally through space.

Previous Season Details

Saturday 25 September 2010

as part of SITEWORKS
at Bundanon

Join us in the ClubHouse for the culmination of the project – the BEST IN SHOW, a sausage sizzle (meat and vegetarian) – where dogs and their collaborators can share their stories, happy snaps and trails of discovery.

Event consultation:  Victoria Spence

laikasderive.sarahwaterson.net

Season Details

SATURDAY 5 NOVEMBER,2011 2-5pm

Track 12, CarriageWorks

The Cad Factory Rural Residency Program, invites three national and one international artist per year to work at the Old Birrego School, a remote, disused, one room school built in 1886. The project aims to increase opportunities for exposure to high quality artistic programming in regional Australia and allow communities to engage with artistic process during the creation of major site specific artwork(s).

RIVER INSIDE THE SKIN: site-specific performance 1

A performance commemorating the native fish that once thrived in this waterhole before the carp. Poison Waterhole creek was chosen for it’s beauty and for it’s many truths buried in the mud and collective memory of local people. The European carp acts out historical violences that continue to threaten and defeat us all.

Saturday 29th October
a durational performance leading into a 5:30 – 6:30pm sundown

Location
Poison Waterhole Creek, Sturt Highway, near Narrandera.

Go to The Cad Factory website where a Google map will be available for exact location. www.cadfactory.com.au

ROADSIDE FREQUENCIES: site-specific performance 2

A performance for unexpecting passing traffic. Victoria Hunt and Vic McEwan, an upright piano and an illuminated plastic gown embedded on top of two dam walls. An installation on the horizon with audio being broadcast to passing cars through radio frequencies. An unexpected snippet of performative installation on a long journey.

Go to The Cad Factory website where a Google map will be available for exact location. www.cadfactory.com.au

Sunday 30th October, 2011
6 – 6.45 pm sundown

Explore your potential and grow your craft and your performance practice. BodyWeather is not just for dancers alone but is for those who simply want to explore their body.

Starting 1 November, this series of 6 weekly classes for beginners and intermediate practitioners will examine the fundament of BodyWeather through the relationship between body, environment and performance. The classes aim to increase sensitivity, listening powers and to develop skills required for performance making.

The classes will focus on:
- a short ‘MB’ to build fitness, flexibility and grounding;
- a series of explorations around the perception of thresholds: such as the meeting place between the inside and outside of the body or what it is to cross from one space to another.

Heffron Hall,
34-40 Burton Street,
Darlinghurst

1 November – 6 December, 2011
Tuesdays 10am – 12noon

Cost: $110
Early Bird Booking $80 – (Book and Pay before October 15)

For more information, bookings and payment contact:  linda.luke@bodyweather.net