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