Day: November 16, 2010

Summary: “Check 1-2. Check 3-4.” Mashed up, mixed down, compressed and ready for distribution. Rewind. It’s time to divorce the digital to marry the live. Cue LightsPlease… Dance, slam poetry, live and digitalised music combine in this interactive performance piece where the line between audience and performance shifts, bends, blurs and breaks. Don’t ask questions. Let your feet do the talking. We’ll do the rest. -Lights Please “The kind of theatre [co-devisor Genevieve Butler] and I make is contemporary, but it’s more ingrained in popular culture. We use popular content and present it in a contemporary way… We both have a love of physical performance and we’re interested in how dance and music can work together in a performative way.” – Courtney Stewart (Time Off Interview) Joff’s Notes: My involvement with this show was mostly a collaboration with dancer FenLan Chuang, together devising a piece for solo dancer and accordion. Our work explored the idea of birth, coming to life, and finding feet. Within the narrative, FenLan acted as a muse character, the embodiment of a developing idea. Working with such a sensitive dancer opened up many possibilities for improvisation, although we did develop and follow a strict structure. Musically, our section of the performance began with exploring the breath-like qualities of the accordion, before it eventually developed into held tones, which over time, and through repetition, grew into the tune. A simple melody emerged as the idea came to

Summary: Busker’s Suite was a work commissioned by the Brisbane City Council to be performed as part of an event aimed at revitalising the cultural life of Stones Corner. It incorporated the themes of rebirth, musical and cultural spaces, growth, and turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. The performance involved seven musicians who appeared as separate buskers. They all played their own tunes until seamlessly joining with one another to play a single piece of music as one group. Joff’s Notes: I designed the performance to be a sensuous experience for the audience – something they could literally walk around, and sit inside. They would get a different experience of the music depending on where they were standing. Every note was written with the venue in mind, so the piece could only come to life on the street. There were many improvised sections wherein the musicians were encouraged to listen texturally and create swelling waves of sound. I was fortunate enough to work with some delicious minstrels who made this