Put on your dancing shoes, Canberra; with a host of events right across the capital, Ausdance ACTโs Australian Dance Week launches today, 29 April, to coincide with International Dance Day.
Ausdance ACT director, Dr Cathy Adamek, told Canberra Daily sheโs โreally excitedโ for Australian Dance Week after the 2020 iteration went online.
โComing out of the Covid year last year where we lost the ability to be able to express ourselves and go see live performance … for the first time weโre able to, with very few restrictions, celebrate all the aspects of dance practice,โ she said. โItโs quite liberating to be at this point I think, itโs a celebration.โ
While bringing people together through movement and performance, Australian Dance Week highlights the best of Canberra’s local dance while also encouraging all to participate.
โWe wanted to make something that was accessible but also engaged all spectrums of dance practice,โ Adamek said.
โThe ecology of dance stretches everything from dance studios up to national institutions and professional practice,โ she said, โand Ausdance attempts to support all that diversity too.โ
Mundaguddah capping a vibrant program
Running until 9 May, the Dance Week 2021 program comprises everything from free classes and workshops to pop-up dance at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and a dance music commission for First Nation dancer and choreographer, Tammi Gissell, titled Mundaguddah.
Taking place at the National Galleryโs Fairfax Theatre, Gissell will be accompanied by a live performance from the Sydney-based Ensemble Offspring.
The piece has been specially commissioned by both Ausdance ACT and the Canberra International Music Festival and is a response to Brian Howardโs 1982 composition, The Rainbow Serpent.
The Indigenous people of north-west NSW, where Gissell grew up, refer to the spirit of The Rainbow Serpent as Mundaguddah.
โYou canโt really muck around with it, I didnโt want to be offending my own people by not doing this justice,โ she said.
This piece marks Gissellโs first major work in seven years. Producing it has been a challenge, forcing her to innovate and reinvent her creative processes.
โNormally music is absolutely primary to what youโre doing, I often canโt create something until Iโve found the right music,โ she said, โand the music was already chosen for me.
โHow I was structuring things was not based on even rhythms, because the music is so out there โฆ itโs been quite personal and challenging for me, made me realise how real this stuff is actually and how present the spirit of Mundaguddah has been in my life,โ she said.
While in town, Gissell will also run a workshop at the Canberra Theatre Centre on Saturday 8 May 3-4.30pm.
Having an opportunity to inspire the next generation is important for her, especially with โso much of the focus on sharingโ at Dance Week.
โTo get in the room with people, get sweaty, and share your trials and tribulations, itโs nice to be able to share a few of those things,โ she said.
Another partnership, between Ausdance ACT and the National Portrait Gallery, has created Love Dance, an on-site dance installation that will see pop-up performances and workshops take place in โunexpected and unusual places inside and outsideโ set against โthat modernist concreteโ.
โIt happens to time beautifully with their Australian Love Stories exhibition, too,โ Adamek said.
Coming from Adelaide to step into her role with Ausdance ACT in September last year, this will be Adamekโs first Australian Dance Week in Canberra and sheโs โreally excited about pretty much every aspect of itโ.
โAnd connecting with everyone, too; itโs an opportunity for the dance sector to come together and catch up in new ways as well.
โThe dance community here is not so big that people get left out, everyoneโs connected back to everybody else. Thereโs a lot of ease in that.โ
Australian Dance Week will take place with events across the Canberra from 29 April to 9 May; ausdanceact.org.au
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