Project 12 - Composure

Composure

Leah Carrell & Ben Mitchell
An Urban Dream Brokerage Project
17 March 2017
23 Princes Street
Property Partner: Harada Investments
Images: Justin Spiers

Composure was a 10 hour-long endurance piece in which the dancers created the choreography as they danced it. People were welcome to come and go throughout the day, watching or participating as the dance unfolded and developed.

Composure used movement, dance and voice to negotiate a live improvised engagement with the design of the vacant space, with sound, and with the relationships between those present in the space. ‘We shape each other, we shape ourselves, we shape the space; we fulfil the tasks of our improvised reality.’

People could come as a dancer, investigating their methods of working; they could have come as a maker, bringing an idea for the dancers to use to make dance (a painting, a poem, a story); they could have come and played an instrument, or they could have come as an observer, sitting and watching it all unfold.

At the core of this project was dance artists Leah Carrell’s and Benjamin Mitchell’s shared interest in developing a sustainable practice, in investigating the interests of choreographers, and in creating a performance that challenged them both physically and creatively.

The use of a vacant space offered audiences an innovative way of engaging with dance through dynamic and unusual interactions. The audience was invited to observe the process of making dance as a transparent sharing of processes, explorations, triumphs and failings.