During his two-week development residency at Critical Path, international choreographer and performer Dinis Machado (SE/PT) invited local choreographers Dan Daw (UK/AU) and Brooke Stamp (AU) to each create a short piece to be part of his ongoing project Barco Dance Collection.
Barco Dance Collection is a research project that Dinis runs parallel to his activity as a choreographer to map and investigate the practices of different choreographers work he is curious about. Dinis invites other choreographers to make short dances (10 to 15 min) that he himself will perform. It is a collection of dances rather than a collection of dance performances (in the interdisciplinary sense of a stage performance where the light, the sound, the set and the costumes build something together). The proposal for the choreographers is to think that the space where each dance happens is not in the room we are in but within the body itself. This is a collection of dances where dance is looked at and worked on as something autonomous.
On Saturday 24 June, Dinis presented, for the first time, the entire collection of 14 pieces including the premiere of the two new Australian works at the Drill Hall.
The collection also consists of dances by Lucy Suggate (UK), Vicky Malin (UK), Robbie Synge (UK), Katerina S. Andreou (GR/FR), Javiera Péon-Veiga (CL), Elisabete Finger (BR), Rosalind Goldberg (SE), Rebecka Stillman (SE), Rachel Tess (US/SE), Jorge Gonçalves (DE/PT), Ali Moini (IR/FR), Miguel Jaime(UY/AR).
http://www.dinismachado.com/barco-dance-collection.html
Dinis Machado has education in dance and visual arts, and his work usually develops from the crossing point of two areas: where the concrete gesture of plastic construction is reclaimed and worked as choreographic material. He has worked as a performer since 1994 and has been choreographing since 2007. Since becoming a choreographer, he has presented several of his works around Europe, in contexts such as ImpulsTanz, MDT, Weld, Dance 4 and many others. Born in Portugal in 1987, Dinis has been based in Stockholm since 2012.
Dan Daw is currently the Associate Director of Sydney’s first professional integrated performance company Murmuration. He has worked with Restless Dance Theatre (AUS), Australian Dance Theatre (AUS), Force Majeure (AUS), FRONTLINEdance (UK), Scottish Dance Theatre (UK), balletLORENT (UK), Candoco Dance Company (UK) and Skånes Dansteater (SWE). Blurring the divide between theatre and dance, all work Dan makes becomes a part of a series of attempts. With his work proposing that “success” and “failure” could possibly be the same thing, he plays, in different ways, with audience expectation in connection to his body’s deviating functionality.
Brooke Stamp’s career spans 17 years as an artist working in choreography, performance and collaborative contexts across visual art and sound, since her graduation from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). Currently based in Sydney, her work draws from improvisational movement practice, ambience of place, and im/material forces that conduit the body between cosmos and earth. Her current works explore sculptural bodily form, site and temporality, across museum, theatre and natural environment. Brooke has been a key collaborator with leading experimental dance company Phillip Adams BalletLab since the company’s inception in 1998. She has also worked with artists including Agatha Gothe-Snape/AGNSW, Lane Cormick/TCB Gallery and Sally Smart/AGSA, and her work has been presented by MTC, Next Wave Festival, Lucy Guerin Inc, Carriageworks, Dancehouse and more.
Images 1, 2 & 4 Barco Dance Collection, Chile. Photo by Isabel Ortiz
Image 3 Barco Dance Collection, Metal UK. Photo by Elisabete Finger
Cover Image Barco Dance Collection, Chile. Photo by Isabel Ortiz