2020 Darwin Festival - Intertwine first presented as a solo within a triple bill called North of Centre
2021 Darwin Festival - Intertwine performed as a trio within the Track's Seasons of Skin and Bark
2021 SPRING.LOADED.DANCE - Intertwine remounted as a solo for North of Centre in Alice Springs

Choreographed by Jess Devereux in collaboration with Kelly Beneforti
 

Kelly and Jess traveled to Mparntwe Alice Springs to present the third iteration of Intertwine. 
We had a chat with Kelly about the experience of returning to dance with Tracks and returning to this piece.

You’re currently rehearsing to perform Intertwine in Mparntwe Alice Springs at SPRING.LOADED.DANCE, a terrific dance festival initiative by GUTS Dance. How are you feeling about the trip?

I’m really excited to reconnect with the other dancers from North of Centre – Jocelyn Tribe, Putu Desak Warti and the crew from GUTS, and it feels really special to remount Intertwine.

SPING.LOADED.DANCE is also being performed in a warehouse, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this piece translates into a different place. I first performed it in a theatre, then it was performed as a trio outside in the dry season on Larrakia country as part of Seasons of Skin and Bark, and now it will be performed in this new environment on Arrernte country. I see this as another opportunity for the work to say something different, on a different country that has different light and shapes, and a different feeling. 

As you mentioned, this is the third time that Intertwine has been performed over the last two years. Has the piece shifted or changed for you between the first time you performed it and now?

When I performed Intertwine the first time, I was carrying and growing my baby in my belly, so I felt his presence in the work from the beginning. Jess too, through her care for my body and attention to how I was feeling, allowed his little being to influence the way I was moving. Now with Florian on the outside, my body feels different again, somewhat neglected I would have to say! But the approach to the work for me has become softer, less urgent. Jess and I often used the phrase ‘quiet ferocity’ in the making of the piece to describe the tone that we were looking for. Perhaps last year I was more in the ferocious, and this time more in the quiet.

It was also incredibly special for me to be in the audience at Seasons of Skin and Bark, and watch this piece unfold before me; to actually be able to sit back and just witness it. Of course, it had changed because Bryn (Wackett), Maari (Gray) and Ru’s (McElroy) personal performance styles and movements influenced it, so it had a new life - but it also had the essence of what I felt when I performed it so that was amazing to see. I also feel like it has now also given back to me which I feel very grateful for; I get to take what I saw with me in Seasons into this new rehearsal space to help generate for myself an entry point back into the work.

Intertwine is a solo work that was choreographed by Jessica Devereux and yourself, do you have any reflections on this collaboration and the experience of doing multiple remounts?

Well I guess every work has a unique group of people who come together to bring it to life and I've worked with Jess in lots of contexts and through lots of processes, but this is probably the most consolidated time that we've worked just the two of us.
Something very unique happened while we worked together in the studio on this piece and so coming back to it, even over just a few rehearsals, it feels like we've been able to hold that space of when we made the piece originally. It also still feels like it has a really strong energy lifeforce to it. 

2021 SPRING.LOADED.DANCE is happening this week in Mparntwe Alice Springs
2021 Seasons of Skin and Bark
2020 North of Centre

Creative Team

Concept and Artistic Directors: Tim Newth and David McMicken
Choreographers: David McMicken, Jessica Devereux and Kate Mornane
Designer: Tim Newth
Musical Director: James Mangohig
Musical Collaborator: Lena Kellie
Lighting Designer: Chris Kluge
Costumes: Cj Fraser Bell

Performers

Anokai Susi, Bintang Daly, Brinda Magar, Bryn Wackett, Eleanor Rushforth , Ellen Hankin, Jenelle Saunders, Kate Mornane, Lucy Found, Maari Gray, Omaya Padmaperuma, Perrin Orlandini, Piper Mules, Ruttiya McElroy, Sarah Lacy, Sheila Rose, Sophia Hodges, Stephanie Spillett, Stephanie Thompson, Tara Schmidt, Teresa Helm and Venaska Cheliah

Seasons of Skin and Bark

"A costume adds meaning and context to both the performer and audience alike".

Costuming a Tracks major performance is a balance between artistic vision, function, meaning and collaboration with performers and the artistic team. We talk with Tim Newth, and Cj Fraser Bell who are teaming up to design and produce the costumes for this year’s show Seasons of Skin and Bark.

Tim Newth is the Tracks Artistic Co-Director and has been the designer of all the company's major works since 1988. He kicks off by explaining why the costumes are important to a Tracks show.

“A costume adds meaning and context to both the performer and audience alike. For the majority of Tracks dancers, this is not their profession. Often it can be someone's first performance experience. If you are asking someone to dance in front of their community...they need to feel good about what you are doing and how they look. A costume can connect the performer to their heritage, add to their sense of self or take one beyond oneself, to be larger than life.”  

Cj is a published poet and interdisciplinary artist with 10 years of experience in the making and presentation of performance works as a designer, writer, performer, and stage manager. 

"So every piece in this costume "collection" is unique"

Here in the Tracks office, we’ve been seeing some delicious samples appearing on the costume rack behind Cj’s desk - how would you describe the costuming for this show and what inspired your concepts?

Cj: Seasons of Skin and Bark has such a conceptional bedrock to draw from, the natural seasons of this place and the seasons of the body, so a colour profile quickly emerged from growing up here and from referencing the Larrakia seasonal calendar with Tim. I was inspired by fashion collection launches and how each piece is distinct but together they come together to make a cohesive unit. So every piece in this costume "collection" is unique in this way, no colours or cuts are repeated, but together they form the seasonal calendar of the top end, of the breadth of our skin tones, and the blooms that pop up in the bush.

Tim:  We definitely utilized the Larrakia calendar used it as our boundaries and a place to start. So colour has been the key thing, rather than it being about having a flared skirt, or being in a particular style. The concept of the show is influenced by the seasons of nature that we experience as human beings - the rain, the wet, the dry, the dew. 

The best person to do the costumes for this show?

Tim, what drew you to Cj as the best person to do the costumes for this show?

Two years ago when Seasons was just in the concept stage we had engaged another designer, but COVID happened and things changed. I knew we needed somebody who was really good with people, because putting someone in a costume is just about as much about that relationship of putting them in a garment and making them feel competent in it, as it is about whether it's red, orange, yellow, or whatever. Somebody suggested Cj who had worked with Tracks for many many years; firstly as a volunteer; then as a Stage Manager, but I had never worked with them creatively. It's been a really wonderful experience and we’re looking forward to the first dress rehearsal in a couple of weeks. 

"Working collectively to create a shared vision is really addictive"

Cj, As an artist who works across multiple art forms and mediums, what do you enjoy most about the type of work you’re doing for this project?

I thrive in a collaborative space - working collectively to create a shared vision is really addictive compared to solo work or leading a project. I've never worked under an artistic director before as an artist in this way so it's been exciting to try a new way of making and dreaming big and then making that a reality.

A Tracks alumni

You’re also a Tracks alumni, having taken part in a number of our dance and choreography programs, have these experiences influenced your concepts for this project?

Hahahah, I don't know about being a dance alumni, but technically yeah, I did the choreo program in 2019 which was so great - after working in stage management for the company for the better part of a decade - I thought it was time I dipped my toe in creatively! Tracks is a truly remarkable company. I love their whole-of-movement approach, and the ephemeral quality of their shows. Having stage managed their shows, and created movement with them definitely helps a first time costume designer wrap their head around the unique requirements these costumes will need to meet!

Cj’s recent design credits include Highway of Lost Hearts by Mary Anne Butler for Brown's Mart, CUSP by Mary Anne Butler for Australian Theatre for Young People and Brown’s Mart (2019/20), and Queer Territory, a performance tour and visual installation Cj created in residence at the Northern Territory Library (2018/19). 

Seasons of Skin and Bark

Seasons of Skin and Bark will be performed at the George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens from 8-16 of August as part of the Darwin Festival.

Read more about Seasons of Skin and Bark

This year Tracks is doing something a little different for the Darwin Fringe Festival. Tim Newth (Tracks Artistic Co-Director) and Jessica Devereux (Tracks Animateur) sat down to chat about the Homebodies dance film installation.

What are you hoping the audience will take away from this show?

Tim

There will be multiple experiences; there's one experience in just seeing the film work that was shot during 2020 for the Homebodies project, which is about where those individual dancers live, and the places they call home. The locations featured in the films range from rural properties, to the cliffs in Nightcliff, to backyards in the Northern Suburbs; they say something about how we choose to live in the Northern Territory, particularly in Darwin, and that's what I love about the project. 

I feel that people will come away from this with a real sense of pride and joy in the place that they've chosen to live, because it really does celebrate this place and it reminds you of the things that you love about creating a home in or around Darwin.

Jess

To me this has quite a sense of occasion - I like that we're taking what I would say is quite an experimental art idea, a series of abstract dance films, into industrial Darwin, and giving these films a home for a couple of nights. What I love about dance for camera is the potential to get up close and personal, in a way that you can't always get in a show; it just provides a slightly different perspective to look at dance, and learn about a performer. 

I'm excited to give the audience an opportunity to really see the 12 artists move in their home, it felt special that the dancers let us witness a part of them and their homes that we would not ordinarily experience when they are performing live in a Tracks project.

How does Homebodies compare to other Tracks’ shows?

Jess

Tracks has quite a strong practice throughout our shows of documenting the work and creating screen content, and then making sure that everything is archived.

For Homebodies, it was a very particular choice to find a home for the footage that we shot in 2020 so that an audience could experience the final films in a live context; so rather than simply putting the footage online like we normally do for Tracks’ works, we’re creating a physical place where Darwin audiences can congregate and experience the work in a new way. It's still super local to Darwin. Temporarily elevating the films from say, an online experience alone at home, to a communal experience.

Tim

I guess what is similar is that this work is about creating an experience for people to enter into; and what's particular about this experience is that it's taking people to a space that, unless they're in the arts and unless they're maybe a technician or production person, they would never otherwise see. So, it's a little bit like taking somebody backstage and creating a more intimate kind of personal experience. 

In regards to the work being viewed on screens as opposed to live, it's almost like we're turning a normal Tracks production inside out so that the audience sees it from the other end of the process and this time the documentation of the performances is the show itself.

What does the warehouse represent? 

Jess

I'm adding a layer of meaning to this which is sort of personal, but I suppose the warehouse provides a place for all of the things that make up a Tracks show in the background. It's kind of a gathering place full of memories from previous shows, so it’s a bit like a second home for Tracks and the other local arts organisations who use it to store all their belongings. 

The vision for having it in a warehouse was to provide an expansive place so that people can meander and walk through; to go on a journey to experience the films.

Tim

That's true, we’re allowing the audience to control their own timeframe for how long they want to experience the installation, even though there's a structure. 

We were a little bit inspired by what happens in the big major art galleries in the other capital cities; quite often film is experienced in an intimate dark room. And I guess what we're doing here is providing content that is very Darwin, but we're not taking you into a black box to experience it, we're taking you into a very uniquely Darwin space.

Find out more about Homebodies
 

Studio Resident - Jing Jin

This year Tracks has provided support to local artists in the form of the 'Tracks Pack', which includes up to 40 hours to use in our studio as an in-kind donation from us. The Tracks Pack was offered to Darwin Fringe Festival and we have had the absolute pleasure of hosting Jing Jin in our studio to rehearse her fabulous Fringe show 'Cocoon'.

Jing Jin is a multimedia artist with roots in Hong Kong and California. Her work focuses on the uncanniness in everyday landscapes as well the interplay of intimacy and isolation. As one of the many Victoria lockdown escapees, she is contributing a piece to the Fringe that explores the experience of the extended lockdown in Victoria and many other parts of the world alike.

We had a chat with Jing Jin to find out more about her and her upcoming performance at Fringe.

You’ve been in Darwin for a little while (because of COVID) - How did this come about and what has your experience of Darwin been so far?

I initially came to Australia to travel and decided to hold onto a steady job in Melbourne when Covid hit. Over time the lockdowns were really starting to take a toll and I got offered a job up in Covid-free Darwin, so I jumped on the opportunity. Having stayed in Darwin for a couple of months during my travels, I knew I could count on the outdoors and pleasant climate (I'm a warm weather person!). What truly impressed me has been the sense of community of this place - in climbing, in the arts, everyone is open to newcomers and as long as you have a passion it is amazingly easy to get involved in things. 

You’re currently rehearsing in the Tracks studio for your Fringe Festival show Cocoon - tell us about the show and what you’re most looking forward to

A cocoon is, paradoxically, cozy and claustrophobic at the same time. Cocoon is an interactive performance that explores social and physical isolation and disorientation, a common yet often hushed-up part of everyday life until this past year - all enclosed in a literal bubble. How does it feel to perform a beautiful act, but covered, unseen? What does it mean to support another person's weight, but six feet apart? How to react to another person's gestures when so much gets lost in distance? After a collective improvisation warm-up that will help develop their movement vocabulary, audience members will be invited to come on stage and discover their own expression of the subject individually and in group settings. I hope to enact the complicated emotional journey of the lockdown through physical acts and call attention to the internal struggles during and beyond the strange year we've had. 

What do you love most about dance and movement practice?

I love the sense of freedom in my body and the ability to express myself with nothing more than my flesh and bones. I also love that it is inherently an "in the moment" thing, as much as we try to document, the sensation of movement and dance is a fleeting and beautiful thing that compels me to focus on the present. 

Find out more about all the dance showcased at Darwin Fringe Festival in 2021

Find out more about Tracks Studio Residencies