Performance Space and Critical Path are thrilled to announce that Atlanta Eke is the recipient of our Experimental Choreographic Residency for 2017 for her new work The Tennis Piece (Working Title).
Atlanta will use the three-week residency to explore new choreographic material for a solo dancer that studies the relationship between human movement and mechanical inventions throughout history. She will consider the fraught relationship between technological advancement and the growing obsolescence of the human body as a technology for movement production.
Atlanta will be joined by composer Daniel Jenatsch and technologists Ready Steady Studio (Hana Miller and Jacob Perkins) to collaborate on a choreographic experiment that will see a collection of programmed tennis ball machines and a robotic lute working together in co-operation and chaos, slowly subsuming the presence of the dancing body. The three-week development will utilise the principles of game theory to structure the movements of the dancer, the machines, and their relationship to one another.
Atlanta Eke lives and works in Melbourne. Her work as a dancer and choreographer is concerned with dissolving pre-existing perceptions and expectations by changing fixed representations of the body through movement. She works with and beyond the limitations of the body, in collaboration with fellow dancers and visual and sound artists in variety of contexts. Her work with dance is currently project specific, within each project a question for the next arises, along side an effort to deconstruct the modes of production and presentation of the previous work. Atlanta questions the political and temporal implications of positioning performance in theatrical and exhibition spaces and timeframes, she is currently interested in working on the format of the exhibition as a resource for dance and choreography as well as developing hybrid transitional spaces for crafting new cultural rituals.
Atlanta Eke_Body of Work. Photo: Gregory Lorenzutti
Atlanta Eke_Tennis Piece. Photo: Marai Louise Boyadgis