"Our technologies, wildest dreams, mainstream narratives and blind spots compose us. The world touches the body and is translated into sensation. And the world, in turn, feels something too."
- Rhiannon Newton
Beginning from the question ‘could a dance be plant-like’, We Make Each Other Up untangles the ways in which a choreography might be viewed as a living organism, engaged in processes of exchange and transformation with those it lives amongst.
We Make Each Other Up is performed by a unique group of human and non-human collaborators. Beginning solo before branching into a series of duets, the work is accompanied by a live sound score by composer Megan Alice Clune and the living plant on-stage to which she is connected.
In a world that is deeply networked, bodies touch technology, touch nature and are in turn touched themselves. The membrane between nature and culture was never really there. Reciprocity and care become critical as we find new ways for ‘the body’ and ‘the dance’ to live and flourish together well. Mutual thriving has never felt so good. A slow and sensitised tendril of dance grows across the dance floor. Entangled in it are stories from the peripheries of our memories and futures that have not quite yet come to pass. We realise we make up, and are made up by each other, our world and the possibilities of our imagination.
Choreographer & Performer: Rhiannon Newton
Collaborators & Performers: David Huggins, Amaara Raheem and Ivey Wawn.
Sound Designer: Megan Alice Clune
Writer: Aodhan Madden
Lighting Design: Siobhain Geaney
Costume Design: Honey Long
We Make Each Other Up is a Dancehouse Housemate Production, commissioned through the 2018 Housemate Residency, premiering at Dancehouse in August 2018. The development of We Make Each Other Up was also supported by The Australia Council, Create NSW, Critical Path, Legs On The Wall, Ausdance NSW and Mirramu Creative Arts.
Cast:Rhiannon Newton