The Artists
TESS DE QUINCEY – ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
TESS DE QUINCEY is a choreographer and dancer who has worked extensively in Australia, Europe, Japan and India as a solo performer, teacher and director. She founded De Quincey Co in 2000. Based in Japan from 1985 until 1991, she was a dancer for 6 years with butoh artist Min Tanaka and his Mai-Juku performance group, which has provided the strongest influence on her work. Her major solo productions MOVEMENT ON THE EDGE 1988-89, ANOTHER DUST 1989-92, IS and IS.2 1994-95 and NERVE 9 2001-2005 have toured extensively in both Europe and Australia whilst her most recent solo MOONDANCE, is an interdisciplinary collaboration with photographer Vsevolod Vlaskine, video artist Sam James and musician Vic McEwan. A series of performance works done over 5 years in the ancient dry lake bed of Mungo, far western New South Wales 1991-95, were the beginnings of her work in the Australian Outback. Tess initiated the TRIPLE ALICE LABORATORIES 1999-2001 that brought together interdisciplinary practices of artists and scientists in relation to the Central Desert of Australia as well as the EMBRACE EXCHANGE between Indian and Australian artists 2003-2008. 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. BodyWeather is the basis of her work.
BODYWEATHER ENSEMBLE
P
ETER FRASER studied BodyWeather with Min Tanaka in Japan, with Frank van de Ven from BodyWeather Amsterdam and has worked with Tess de Quincey since 1990 – from desert inhabitation SQUARE OF INFINITY in Lake Mungo 1992 to the raft-based performance MOUNTAIN & WATER at Bundanon Arts Centre 2014. Peter’s independent solo works include TARKOVSKY’S HORSE at Dancehouse, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Performance Space 2008; ZENO’S OVERCOAT at Monash University 2009; and LIZARD – A BOX OF GAPS performed in a glass case in a shop window in Melbourne 2013. Other collaborative projects include TOGETHER, a dark comedy devised with co-performer Tom Davies and dramaturg Barry Laing at La Mama, Melbourne 2010 and SOUNDS LIKE MOVEMENT at Festival of Live Art, Footscray 2014, which is an ongoing project with instrument-builder/musician Dale Gorfinkel exploring the relationship of movement, materials such as paper and sound. Peter recently completed an MA (Monash University) on Strategies of Truthful Performance, researching the nature of embodied performance.
VICTORIA HUNT is an Australian-born artist with a practice that spans dance, performance art, education and cultural practice. Her tribal affiliations are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu Maori, English and Irish. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from Griffith University 1997 and is currently enrolled in the Honours program in Dance at UNSW. Victoria is a founding member of De Quincey Co and has performed in over 40 works with the company since 2000, from site-specific performances in the central desert to city theatres and public places in Sydney and to a range of venues in Kolkata, India. Victoria has also toured internationally with renowned New Zealand performance company MAU to Auckland, Vienna, Brussels and London 2006-07. She has trained with Min Tanaka, Masaki Iwana, Charles Koroneho, Oguri, Fiona Winning and Barbara Campbell. Since 2008 she has been the dance educator at EORA College, a center for Indigenous education and training in Sydney, and has led professional movement classes for youth theatre companies and the independent dance sector since 2001. Victoria’s core movement practice is Bodyweather, and so relationship to place, being danced by a place, and image and sensory-based work are all primary approaches to working with the body. This is combined with research into her Pacific cultural heritage. Over the last decade she has been conducting research into Hinemihi, a female ancestor and ceremonial space connected to her Maori heritage, whose story is danced in two recent works—DANCING THE DEAD: A PERFORMED CONVERSATION in 2010 and COPPER PROMISES: HINEMIHI HAKA in 2012—the latter earning her a Helpmann Award nomination for best female dancer and toured to the ORIGINS Festival of First Nations in London in 2013. Victoria’s first solo work FLYING BACKWARDS TO MEET THE FUTURE, presented by De Quincey Co, was nominated for Best Independent Choreography at the Australian Dance Awards in 2005. These and other works form an ongoing examination of the processes of objectification and legacies of colonization for indigenous peoples. Visually powerful and arresting, the works move between installation, video, and multimedia performance. “In my work and in my teaching, I am questioning how we might prepare ourselves to fully inhabit a place… How can I initiate people into a cultural space? What is it to have a cultural body? We are all from the land—but how do we have a relationship of reciprocity to that place, our ancestors, and our heritage? This is a political act, to begin dancing.”
LINDA LUKE holds a BA in Communication, University of Technology – Sydney 1998 and has worked in dance and performance since 1997. Linda joined De Quincey Co in 2004 performing most recently in INNER GARDEN at Sydney College of the Arts 2014, BOX OF BIRDS presented by Performance Space at Carriageworks 2013 and NO COLD FEET as part of Art & About Festival Sydney 2011. Linda’s latest solo piece STILL POINT TURNING premiered in 2014 at Dancehouse for the Melbourne Festival and toured to Parramatta Riverside Theatre for Dance Bites In Western Sydney and to Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery. Other solos include THIRTEEN: REFLECTIONS ON TEENAGE HOMELSSNESS for Performance Space’s LiveWorks Festival 2010; and BORDERLINES for Dancehouse in Melbourne, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Performance Space, Sydney in 2008. Her DANCE DIARIES series includes two short dance film commissions by Campbelltown Arts Centre 2010 and for The Cad Factory in Narrandera, south-west NSW in 2013. This ongoing series engages young and elderly communities as participants in still and moving images about the experience of home and of displacement. Linda sustains a vibrant teaching practice including public workshops as well as teaching movement at Wollongong University for its undergraduate program. Linda is Associate Director of ReadyMade Works studio, a studio for independent dance makers in Sydney, and is treasurer of The Cad Factory.
KIRSTEN PACKHAM is a conceptual artist. Her predominant movement training is in BodyWeather and she has worked with De Quincey Co in research and performances since 2012. Performances include INNER GARDEN, BOX OF BIRDS, 6 WOMEN DANCE and SOLO as a part of Platform 5 with De Quincey Co; DUET with Lian Loke for Whip It Impro; and choreography for Quantum Leap. Kirsten has trained with Tess de Quincey, Frank Van de Ven, Victoria Hunt and Linda Luke in BodyWeather; with Jacqui Simmonds in Sydney, Pauline Oliveros in Switzerland, and with Joan Laage, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie and Yuko Kaseki in London.The nexus of movement, light and space have been ongoing key areas of exploration in video, works on paper and performance since the mid 1990’s. Her artwork has been shown in Australia, France and the UK and she has won awards for videos and installation. Kirsten was the first recipient of the inaugural Neil Roberts Memorial Award for her installation RESIDUE. Videos include FIVE BELLS in collaboration with Jane Packham at the Sydney Opera House with Ten Part Invention. She holds a BA Honours in Visual Art from the Australian National University.
TOM DAVIES is a graduate of The National Theatre Drama School (2000) and studied Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne (1998- 2003) and acting at Ecole Philippe Gaulier (2004). He trained in Capoeira (1998-2001), circus training at The National Institute of Circus Arts (2000), in Butoh with Tony Yap and Yumi Umiumare (2000-03) and in Bodyweather with Tess de Quincey since 2001. He participated in the performance laboratories Dream Regime led by Gekkidan Kaitaisha in 2004, and Space for Ideas led by Johnathon Burrows, Meryl Tankard and Lloyd Newson in 2002. Most recently he has performed in The Bones Love Gringo by Lady Muck 2008, Hotel Obsino at La Mama in 2007, The Memory Priest at Big West Festival 2007, in 4.48 Psychosis by Red Stitch 2007 and in Bruises by Lupa Arts 2007. Tom performed with De Quincey Co in FIVE Short Solos at Performance Space in 2005 and in Dictionary of Atmospheres in the riverbed in Alice Springs for the Alice Desert Festival 2005. He performed in Melbourne Theatre Company’s Metamorphoses 2003, In-Compatibility by Yumi Umiumare and Tony Yap as part of Melbourne International Festival 2003, Australian Marriage Act by Arena Theatre Company 2002, in La Mama`s Moonbabies 2002 and Horse Girl vs Captain Brap 2001, in Flying the Shadow at Dancehouse 2001 and in Wind in the Willows by Australian Shakespeare Company 2001.
ASSOCIATE ARTISTS – Click each name for more
Vic McEwan
Oguri
Debra Petrovitch
Pimmon
Emmanuela Prigioni Alebardi
Kathryn Puie
Christine Quoiraud
Tom Rivard
Rob Saunders
Peter Snow
Amanda Stewart
Ian Stevenson
Latai Taumoepeau
Yumi Umiumare
Frank van de Ven
Vsevolod Vlaskine
Tony Yap
Oguri
Debra Petrovitch
Pimmon
Emmanuela Prigioni Alebardi
Kathryn Puie
Christine Quoiraud
Tom Rivard
Rob Saunders
Peter Snow
Amanda Stewart
Ian Stevenson
Latai Taumoepeau
Yumi Umiumare
Frank van de Ven
Vsevolod Vlaskine
Tony Yap
