For those of us on the periphery of the creative process it’s always interesting to learn where artists draw their inspiration from. In a new performance, Etcetera, which brings together two fresh new works, the inspiration has come from very disparate sources.
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Choreographer James Batchelor spent two months on an expedition travelling to sub-Antarctic islands in 2016 as an artist in residence with the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies.
His work Hyperspace is a response to that journey, the third instalment after Deepspace and Redshift.
“The whole series has been looking at what it means to encounter the unknown and how do we map the unknown,” says Batchelor.
“This final instalment is very centred in the body and what the encounter is, how the unknown meets our body, and how we meet the unknown.
“It's really about that curiousity and embodied thinking.”
For her work, Unbecoming writer and director Cathy Petocz found inspiration during her honours thesis at the Australian National University, where she reworked Lysistrata.
“I came across this academic article written by Hannah McCann, a Melbourne academic,” Petcoz says.
“She was writing about this idea of the death of feminism and connecting that with the trope of the dead girl and I thought this is really interesting, it's not related to my thesis at all, but I might just tuck that away.”
Unbecoming tells the story of Ado, a woman of colour who wakes up dead with no memory of dying. She sets about solving the mystery, entitled to one haunting to help find some answers.
“I was very interested in the trope of the dead girl that we see in popular culture,” Petcoz says.
“Why is this image so juicy to us when it's quite a troubled image to be inspired by?”
Isabel Burton plays Ado, her first professional role since graduating from the University of Wollongong’s performance department.
“Throughout the creative process it was interesting to see how we could tie in the pop culture idea of the dead girl trope and how usually we see the dead girl as being a white girl and we never really think about women of colour,” Burton says.
Petcoz said the play will help redefine our idea of the word unbecoming.
“She's unbecoming in the sense that she's doing the opposite of becoming, she's coming undone,” Petcoz says.
“She's also unbecoming because she has to solve this mystery and haunt someone so she does all these crazy things that are unbecoming.”
All three young performers are originally from Canberra and are looking forward to performing in front of a home audience.
Batchelor started his dance career with the youth dance program Quantum Leap.
“Working with such a great team there showed me a way forward in the dance world,” he says.
The Etcetera format is a refreshing one. Doors open at 6pm for happy hour, followed by a live music act, which will change for each show, at 7pm, followed by the headline act at 8pm.
The run opens on March 6 with Unbecoming, supported by Happy Axe, and Aphir on March 8. Hyperspace, supported by Pheno, is on March 7, and then again on March 9 supported by Reuben Ingall. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre.
