CHOREOGRAPHER Laura Boynes probably won’t be eating a bowl of rice any time soon.
One thousand kilograms of the food staple features on stage in her latest work Dark Matter, a centrepiece production in the four-day MoveMe Festival 2016 dance program at State Theatre Centre of WA from September 15 to 18.
“Rice is incredibly heavy to move around and makes for a lot of work shovelling and using brooms,” Boynes said.
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READ NOW“It’s pretty messy, ends up everywhere and leaves a powdery residue on anything it touches, so by the end of the show the dancers end up looking like they’ve been dumped in a pot of flour.
“It’s an interesting texture to work with and has influenced the choreography because it’s incredibly slippery and is like moving around on ice.
“Some movements have been too dangerous but that also means there are things we’ve been able to do which wouldn’t be possible on a normal floor.”
Dark Matter will be presented by Performing Lines WA and performed by PRAXIS, a creative collaboration between WAAPA-graduate Boynes, her partner and cellist Tristen Parr, who composed the live soundtrack, and her brother Alexander Boynes on video and installation.
“Dark Matter is about human adaptation and displacement, our natural need as humans to blend into our environment and how our environments shape us as humans,” Boynes said.
“It’s a very abstract work and multi-sensory experience; there’s really driving, interesting live sound from Tristen, vibrant projection mapping from Alexander and then the five dancers.
“The rice is a metaphor for society as a whole and we see the grains of rice as humans.
“We spend a lot of time shifting it throughout the space; sometimes that can also look like erosion or shifting landforms.
“Dark matter is matter in space that has gravitational properties and that was one of the first things that drew us to the idea of particles or grains; we could see them scattering and being drawn back together like the idea of dark matter and communities in society.”
The MoveMe Festival 2016 mainstage program also features Decadance Perth 2016 by STRUT Dance and Co3’s the cry.
Early bird festival passes for entry to all three shows are on sale until Friday, August 19.
THE ESSENTIALS
What: Dark Matter
Where: Studio Underground
When: September 16 to 18
Tickets: www.ticketek.com.au