The Howl
Commissioned by Tasdance for Affinity
“Intense, cinematic. Alternating rage and warmth. No wonder The Howl was a hit with the cheering crowd.”
World Premiere
Theatre Royal, Hobart
October 9, 2015
Double Bill with Graeme Murphy OAM with music played live by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
Back in the early 90’s, as a teenager, I started doing contemporary dance classes at Tasdance. A few years later I perched myself on the stone step and offered to sweep floors and do odd jobs in return for a traineeship with the company. After that year of training and performing I was then ready to try my luck in the big smoke and the rest is history.
It’s an immense pleasure to be back. I approached the making of this work with no preconceived idea of what it would become.
The music provided our framework and the choreographic world mushroomed out of the chemical reaction between myself and the dancers. It has become about the rupture between states of chaos and organisation. On the one hand the dancers rally, galvanise and move in the same direction. On the other they thrash, shatter and collapse. There is domination and there is tenderness as they crystallise into mechanistic parts and fall into the wild.