INTER-PLAY: Dances about Support
South Dunedin Community Hall, Dunedin
25/08/2013 - 25/08/2013
Production Details
INTER-PLAY: Dances about Support
Sunday 25th August
Community dance workshop 1.30pm – 2.30pm
Dance performance 3pm – 4pm
Briggs’ Caroline Plummer Fellowship will culminate in an afternoon of dance open to all.
From 1.30pm – 2.30pm Briggs will run an open community dance workshop. In this workshop you will get a taste of the various movement explorations Briggs has been teaching in her creative movement classes.
From 3pm – 4pm Briggs will showcase three short integrated performances. Integrated performance includes dancers with a diverse range of embodiments, including people with disabilities. Two of the performances will be performed by people attending Briggs’ creative movement classes and will demonstrate various exercises practised in these classes. The third performance will be performed by a small group of support workers and carers who have been meeting with Briggs once a week over the past few months. In their performance the dancers’ portray improvisational and choreographic responses to four transcribed interviews. Briggs interviewed four people in the community who each work (or have worked) with a different population: young people, Queer students, people with disabilities, and older people in retirement villages.
The Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance was established in 2003 and honours Caroline Plummer (1978-2003). The annual fellowship is for six months and is open to community dance practitioners, teachers and researches from New Zealand and overseas. Briggs states:
In my fellowship I place a strong emphasis on building a strong and creative ‘temporary’ community with those I dance with. I am inspired by Caroline’s writing, “There is huge potential for dance to play an active and stimulating role in the development of ourselves, not only as individuals but also within the dynamic process that is “community”.
‘Inter-play’ community workshop and performance will take place at the South Dunedin Community Hall, 261 King Edward Street, South Dunedin. You may come to one event or both events. There is no cost, however koha is welcome.
Feel free to contact Hahna Briggs if you have any questions:
E: hahna.briggs@otago.ac.nz
P: 0274471426 / 03 479 8974
Monday and Tuesday include participants are from Hahna's creative movement classes. These two short works explore support, movement, inclusivity and community engagement. The dancers from Friday have been exploring their own movement responses to four transcribed interviews with Dunedin based support workers. The dancers from this group are themselves support workers and carers.
Order of Performances
Monday
Hahna Briggs
Marie-jose Chauvin
David King
Louise Lin
Jonathan MacKinnon
Stacey McCullough
Jenny Newstead
Friday
Holly Aitchison
Hahna Briggs
Jenny Newstead
Rowan Stanley
Chanel Tuffley
Tuesday
Holly Aitchison
Hahna Briggs
Thomas Crowie
Ella Evans
Myles Lee
Philip Lomas
William Luskie
Grant Mitchell
Jenny Newstead
Ian Robertson
Melania Smith
Ben Owen
Philip Thomson
Chanel Tuffley
Andrea Wade
Darryl White
Michael Williams
Question and Answer opportunity between audience and performers.
Hahna Briggs Creative director
Jenny Newstead Assistant director
Jimmy Currin Original and improvised music, lighting technician
David King Stage manager, production assistant
James Williams Front of house, support crew
A huge thank you to-
The Caroline Plummer Fellowship committee. The School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Science, University of Otago. The Sherwood Lend a Hand Group. The support workers who supported people to come to the creative movement classes: Holly Aitchison, Debra Mackinnon, Chanel Tuffley, and Sandra. Theatre Studies, University of Otago.
1 hour
Worth its weight in more than gold
Review by Hannah Molloy 25th Aug 2013
Interplay – the way in which things have an effect on each other. Often used to describe the way light and shadow fall and the relationship of music to movement. This performance, Inter-play: dances about support was certainly about music and movement but it was mostly about the interplay between humans, those who learn to know each other and to find pleasure and value in each other’s being, and those who know each other well and feel connected and supported in the elements of their differentness and of their sameness.
Hahna Briggs is the 2013 Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance at the University of Otago The Fellowship is open to community dance practitioners, teachers and researchers whose proposal or project furthers Ms Plummer’s (1978-2003) belief and aspirations for community dance in New Zealand.
Briggs’ work with differently abled people in her creative movement classes has drawn together an engaging, if temporary by design, company, which performed beautifully in the South Dunedin Community Hall. The fact that it started promptly was a little challenging for some in the Dunedin audience used to things starting late, with quite a few people wandering in at and after the start time. They were all welcomed with a very cheerful smile at the door.
The large space meant it was difficult to watch everyone and everything but there was movement all around the room and my two young guests were not the only ones sitting on the edge of their seats, making sure they missed as little as possible.
Inter-play was made up of three short performances by people who attend Briggs’ class, both those with disabilities and their support people. The third dance was an expression of the transcripts of four interviews Briggs conducted with people who have worked with different populations (young people, queer students, people with disabilities, and older people in retirement villages). This dance culminated in the audience being invited to join an impromptu disco and the applause was huge.
Inviting questions after a performance is a brave move and Briggs accepted with remarkable grace and equanimity the critique offered by one audience member. The comment that the movements and music were sinister and depressing was a moment of clarity for me that, like beauty, dance really is in the eye of the beholder. There was concentration and determination and pleasure in the faces of all the dancers, both experienced and inexperienced. Briggs herself was delightful to watch and the embodiment of the gentleness and care that goes with working closely and supportively with people.
This sort of work is largely unnoticed in our mainstream, corporatised culture. The most we hear is usually that support workers are underpaid and, while this is true (and should probably get more airtime than it does), it is difficult to quantify the value of the work. How do you place value on human interaction? Or on the joy of finding self expression or being an integral part of a community? I don’t know how you measure the worth of the people who do this work but it should be measured in something weightier than gold.
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