Waiting Game Digital Program

WAITING GAME

PHAEDRA BROWN, TAMARA BOUMAN & OSCAR SWEENEY PRESENT

A DANCE AGAINST DISILLUSIONMENT Resilience and gentle hope – that which is cultivated

everyday

through

small

acts

of

humanity.

Waiting Game speaks to the joy, humour and tragedy within the minutiae of everyday life. It is

simultaneously

relentless

and

expectant;

desolate yet dependent upon camaraderie and togetherness. The work embraces the need for connection in a world that seems so illogical.

It

reflects

experiences

of

anticipation,

repetition and monotony that might transform ultimately into disillusionment. However, by reimagining these feelings, now familiar from long periods of isolation, Waiting Game aims to shift

into

spaciousness,

clarity,

and

conversation. Join us as we dance away our disillusionment, and the joy of movement becomes a tool for resistance.

Waiting

Game

is

the

debut

duet

between

choreographer/dancer Phaedra Brown and dancer Tamara Bouman. It was created in collaboration with composer Oscar Sweeney.

PHAEDRA BROWN Phaedra Brown is a 24 year old dancer and choreographer

from

Sydney.

She

works

with

improvisation, site-specific dance, film and digital technology. She also has an interest in dancetheatre and performance art as well as multidisciplinary compositional approaches.

Phaedra is currently undertaking a Masters in Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) with Honours from the Victorian College of the Arts and a Certificate IV in dance from Ev & Bow. Phaedra has performed in Interchange Dance Project’s ‘Train Escape’ (2021), Andrew Fraser and Victoria Punturere’s ‘Everything is Everything’ at M Pavilion (2019), Stephanie Lake’s ‘Colossus’ (2018, 2019), Thalia Livingstone’s ‘Dark Points’ (2019), the National Gallery of Victoria’s ‘Triennial Extra’ Programme (2018), the NGV's reconstruction of ‘Demon Machine’ (2017), and Nick Cave’s ‘Heard Sydney’ (2016).

Phaedra’s choreographic work ‘A Small Spectacle’ appeared via livestream at the 2020 Melbourne Fringe Festival and the 2021 March Dance Festival.

Phaedra’s work ‘Animinimalis’ (2018) was performed at Melbourne Fringe Festival before being re-worked to appear at the Guild Theatre Fringe Festival Hub (2019).

TAMARA BOUMAN Tamara has been performing as a professional dance artist since 2018. She is keenly interested in

cross

disciplinary

and

cross

cultural

collaboration, exploring the sheer physicality, intricacy and dexterity of movement and the body’s limits/restrictions, using dance to deepen her connection to her culture and land and how the body can be used as a tool for learning and sharing.

Past

performances

include

Stephanie

Lake’s

Colossus (2018, 2019, 2020), Sarah Aiken and Rebecca Jensen’s What Am I Supposed To Do? (WAISTD) (2019), Dream Cellscapes with Alice Weber (2021) Rebecca Jensen’s Sinkhole X (2022), Alisdair Macindoe’s A.I.D pop-up performance (2022) and Ngioka Bunda-Heath’s Bridge (2022).

Tamara has been also fortunate enough to work with artists Cloé Fournier, Phaedra Brown, Matt Cornell,

Wendy

Yu,

Emily

Flannery,

Rebecca

Jensen, and Daniel Riley on a wide range of creative developments. She was a member of the 2021 Leg Up Program with Legs on the Wall.

Tamara choreographic work includes her 2021 work What Do I Do Today, a solo commissioned by Dance Maker’s series.

Collective

for

their

‘Home

Bodies’

OSCAR SWEENEY Oscar Sweeney is an emerging composer with a background in both digital and acoustic writing.

Oscar’s

practice

popular

music,

is

spent

chamber

between works

and

writing most

prominently film and media scoring.

Oscar

completed

his

Bachelor

of

Music:

Composition from the Sydney Conservatorium in 2019, under the tutelage of composers Michael Smetanin and Paul Stanhope. During this time his composition for brass quartet, Bragi’s Lament, was

performed

at

the

Verona

Conservatorio

(2017).

Oscar has composed for Moorambilla Voices’ 2020 Module series, creating accompanying music for Courtney Scheu’s yoga series and indigenous artist Frank Wright’s painting series. He has also worked as the composer and musical director of the 2018 Sydney University Commerce Revue and composed for Guy Mansfield’s 2018 short film ‘Swan Song.’

Oscar is also a vocalist and chorist performing in the Sydney Philharmonia with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis at the Sydney Opera House (2019), as a soloist at the Carols on Norton alongside the Leichhardt Espresso Chorus in (2016), and with the State Music Choir for His Majesty King Harold V of Norway in (2015).

THANK YOU The team of Waiting Game would like to thank our generous supporters: Aidan Bondfield, Alexandra Dobson, Alice Spizzo, Bec Berry, Carol Brown, Christine Sammers, David Brown, Georgia Gouros, Graeme Sephton, Helen Fahy, Jacob McKenna, Jane Castle, Jason Pearce, Johanna Bodewes, Julie Sammers, Kyle Ramboyong, Liam Dunoon, Linda Dement, Lizzie Butterworth, Marion Brown, Patrick Fahy, Patrick Nolan, Paul Brown, Paul Ireland, Rachel Mackie, Ray and Kerry Thomas, Ro Murray, Ryan Bondfield, Sophie Clutterham, Stephanie Lake, Tess Drinkwater, Tina Jackson, Vanessa Palfreeman & all our other anonymous donors.

For any inquiries about the show please email: phaedrajbrown@gmail.com Program photographs by Sandra Theresa This work was created and presented with support from March Dance Festival, City of Sydney, Readymade Studios, and the Australian Cultural Fund.