AND NOW WE MOVE ON

DANCE

24 Jan

Recently landed: And Now We Move On

Gracia’s written response to Project Animo’s debut season, for Fjord Review.

In the forest at night, the same place you know by day feels different. It sounds different, and the paths you might normally have taken are either obscured from view or no longer possible to traverse. Other senses come into play to orientate, perhaps those that seemed more dormant in the day, like smell or sound. In such instances I think of microbats capable of echolocation, sending out a call into their environment and reading the echo returned to them from nearby forms in their surroundings, in order to forage and navigate, as I listen to pinpoint where I might be. I picture a moth covered in downy hairs muffling its movements to avoid being detected by a microbat. No forest is ever quiet by day or night, and if it is, it is perhaps in a dire condition. It should be teeming with life, with the activities of many, buzzing, humming, flapping, squawking, chomping, lapping, navigating. And it is to the forest that Kristina Chan takes us in her new work In Real Life presented in Project Animo’s debut. Stepping back, the same could be said of new dance collective Project Animo’s determination to take a new path in familiar ‘by day’ surroundings. Changing perceptions by “flipping the script on traditional models and questioning the notion of what it means to be in your ‘prime’.”[i]

For Project Animo co-founders, Alice Topp and Jon Buswell, their intention is to “create a platform that celebrates emerging, independent and mature artists” while fostering “the conversations between composers and designers”. They are doing so by growing a reciprocal “artistic ecosystem”, comprised of works created during, not because of, Covid-19. An ecosystem shaped by and revealed during a pandemic, but Project Animo’s emphasis on “celebrating homegrown voices” and collaboration was taking root long beforehand.

As such, And Now We Move On, their premiere season, refers less to ‘living with Covid’, and more to what comes next in a changing dance landscape. Presenting five new works at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, opening with Kinetic Gestalt, choreographed by Cass Mortimer-Eipper; followed swiftly by The Wave, Deborah Brown; Egoist, Izzac Carroll; In Real Life, Chan; and concluding after interval with Topp’s Patina, moving on can be an exciting process from which sprouts a buzzing, humming, flapping topography.

[i] Project Animo Incorporated Co-Founders Alice Topp and Jon Buswell’s Welcome, And Now We Move On, 2022 Project Animo debut season programme, p. 3.