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Tower Suites
Ros Warby

Venue: Dunstan Playhouse
When: Tue 28 Feb 04:30 PM - 05:25 PM
Genre: Dance
Main Audience: All Ages
No. in touring party: 6

Tower Suites

In Tower Suites Warby looks at the subtle layers of hierarchy in relationships and our lives through historical referencing and personal experience. The work draws attention to the often confused attempts of the individual to navigate the delicate terrain of human behaviour, and the subsequent creation and collapse of the 'worlds' and structures we build around us. This is the fifth major work Warby has created with designer Margie Medlin and composer Helen Mountfort. Their 20 year collaborative history brings a mature weight and resonance to the work.

In Tower Suites Warby places herself on stage in relation to singer, Ria Soemardjo, and Mountfort on cello, each experienced performers with mature stage presence and compositional intelligence. Within this trio Warby plays out the subtle and transient moments of relationship. Working for the first time with Soemardjo, her pure and profound vocal tradition has thrown a significant new dynamic into this dance work. The juxtaposition against Warby’s raw and surprising use of voice is a potent addition.

Film images of architectural landscapes at a pinnacle of achievement and in collapse, and aspects of filmed dance material reflecting these suggest insights into what society has created and developed values around, and the possible inaccuracies of these perceptions

Ros Warby

Ros Warby has been creating and performing solo dance since 1990 and her award winning work has been presented in Australia, Europe and the USA. Warby has also performed with numerous companies and artists including Lucy Guerin and Deborah Hay. Over 20 years Warby has nurtured a rapport with her creative collaborators, designer Margie Medlin and composer Helen Mountfort. The result is an elaborate interplay between elements of dance, film, sound and light.

Warby has received the Robert Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer 2007, Greenroom Awards for Best female performer in 2000 & 2007 and best Solo performer in 2001, the Age Critics Commendation Award 2006, an Australia Council Fellowship (2002 – 2004), and the 2007 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. Her critically acclaimed works SOLOS and SWIFT have toured to Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals, Portland, London, New York, Miami, Houston, London and Budapest. Monumental premiered at the Melbourne Festival and has toured to the USA, Venice Biennale, London’s Dance Umbrella, Royal Opera House, and Spring Dance, Sydney Opera House. Warby and Medlin’s cinematic version of SWIFT was televised on ABC and screened at international festivals.

In 2011 Ros Warby works again with legendary US choreographer Deborah Hay on the Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank project in Frankfurt.

"Arresting, enigmatic work – every move she makes is subtle and true." The Village Voice, New York
"Quiet wisdom. That’s art that sticks to your bones." Houston Chronicle

Photo: Calista Lyon