SEARCHLIGHT

Cut Away
Animal Farm Collective

Venue: Piano Bar
When: Tue 28 Feb 09:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Genre: Dance
Main Audience: All Ages
No. in touring party: 5

Cut Away

Memory is fleeting and film can be edited, so let's reinvent ourselves from the ground up and pretend.

Two workmen enter a space, empty except for an old piano neglected in the corner, and begin to transform it in a functional choreography of ladders, dropsheets and paint. A frame takes shape, almost by accident. They step through it, the colour drains away, their movements speed up and take on a jerky rhythm, as they are transported into the world of silent film.

Cut Away evokes this world, and explores our uneasy relationship to the past, through the physical language of silent film, and through the curious distancing effect this creates. But everything will be done physically within the space, without resorting to the expedient use of multi-media. It’s just the two extraordinary dancers on a stripped stage, along with composer Iain Grandage, controlling the world behind the screen as he bangs away at the old piano, lit by designer and collaborator Mark Howett. This highly portable work again showcases the gutsy choreography, surreal imagery and wicked sense of humour seen in previous Webber/Millwood collaborations lawn and roadkill.

Performers: Gavin Webber & Grayson Millwood
Composer/Performer: Iain Grandage
Design & Lighting: Mark Howett

Animal Farm Collective

Gavin Webber and Grayson Millwood have established a unique collaborative working relationship, a practice spanning between Germany and Australia, and a body of highly successful works, which continue to tour. They began working together at Meryl Tankard’s ADT in the early nineties, before moving to Europe and working for leading dance theatre companies, Gavin with Ultima Vez, and Grayson with Sasha Waltz and Guests.

In 2004 they made lawn with Mark Howett, Iain Grandage and others under the name Splintergroup. It has been remounted five times and presented in Australia, Germany & Singapore. roadkill premiered in 2007 and has toured to the Barbican, France, Italy, Spain, Canada & Australia. lawn and roadkill between them won six Green Room Awards in 2010. Most recently, they made Food Chain under the name Animal Farm Collective (Sydney Festival, Freiburg & Heidelberg, Germany, and St Pölten Austria).

Gavin’s other work includes four years as Artistic Director of Dancenorth (2005-9), creating Nightcafe, gravity feed, underneath, Underground and Remember Me. Grayson has worked with choreographers/directors including Joachim Schloemer, Benoît Lachambre, Constanza Marcras, Nasser Martin-Gousett, Luc Dunberry, Eve Sussman and the Rufus corporation, choreographed for the Grand Theatre de Geneve, and created the piece Edgar with Claudia de Serpa Soares.