2020 New Breed Program

SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY AND CARRIAGEWORKS PRESENT

New Breed 26 Nov – 12 Dec

New Breed Principal Partner

1

Welcome

Welcome.

As this year began, we had no idea that the seventh edition of New Breed would be the first time the dancers of Sydney Dance Company would take to the stage in 2020. What an incredible year it has been, and what a privilege to be finally sharing dance with you. It means everything to us to be back on stage.

This is a New Breed like no other: four diverse emerging Australian choreographers responding to a new world and making new work that reflects significant aspects of their own culture.

Each piece you see in New Breed this year is physically distanced, a choreographic creative response to COVID-safety.

In March, as Sydney Dance Company was cancelling the year’s performances across Australia and internationally, we had no idea if New Breed would happen. But it was important that we should be ready in case circumstances allowed performance by the end of the year, and thus dancers Chloe Leong and Jesse Scales conceived and began to create their works in isolation, working with their colleagues through Zoom. They pushed ahead, with positive focus and hope, and I am in awe of how Chloe, Jesse and the dancers of the Company adapted to a new way of working. With determination and resilience, their creative spirits thrived.

Melbourne-based choreographer Joel Bray undertook a two-week quarantine to be here to make his work on the dancers. Joel is a proud Wiradjuri man, whose work explores the raven totem and I am delighted that he has been partnered with Yuin composer Brenda Gifford, whose score results from of our partnership

1

with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Composing Women program.

Sydney artist Raghav Handa completes the quartet. Raghav’s challenging, powerful and thought provoking piece explores the misuse of the Hindu swastika, the appropriation of an ancient symbol of peace, by fascism.

I am excited by what has been created by these eloquent and talented artists and I extend my congratulations to each of the choreographers who have truly pushed the boundaries of their practice this season.

We are delighted to be once again partnering with Carriageworks and presenting New Breed in this incredible and inspiring space. We are very appreciative of how this collaboration has allowed New Breed to flourish and I’d like to thank the Carriageworks team led by Blair French.

The Balnaves Foundation, led by Neil Balnaves AO, has been instrumental in New Breed’s success. Their visionary leadership since the program’s inception has created an invaluable framework to nurture Australian choreographic talent. This year, I am particularly grateful for their generosity in providing additional support which has allowed us to extend the season. With a paucity of performance opportunity in 2020, we thank them for their leadership support to bring artists and audience together, just as it should be, as the year closes.

I hope you enjoy New Breed 2020.

Rafael Bonachela Artistic Director, Sydney Dance Company

As Sydney Dance Company embark on their seventh edition of New Breed at Carriageworks, I would like to take this opportunity to pay special tribute to Sydney Dance Company as the first major dance company in NSW to return to the stage after the company was forced to cancel all previously scheduled performances due to COVID-19. We are so excited to welcome you back.

The Balnaves Foundation is delighted to be supporting this seventh edition of New Breed, particularly after what has been an incredibly tumultuous year for the performing arts. This is the first time in 2020 that the dancers of Sydney Dance Company have taken to the stage, and to do so with such exciting work from these four emerging choreographers makes this program even more significant.

New Breed supports the very best emerging Australian choreographers through the annual commissioning and presentation of new dance work. For New Breed 2020, choreographers Joel Bray, Raghav Handa, Chloe Leong and Jesse Scales have had the opportunity to create social distanced new commissions on members of Sydney Dance Company. To be able to present such ambitious live work to onsite audiences after such a difficult year, for all involved in the arts generally and live performance, is especially thrilling.

Over the last seven years, almost 30 Australian choreographers have come through this program. The Balnaves Foundation is passionate about Australia’s creative community and the pivotal role that the arts play in reflecting our nation. We are particularly interested in supporting opportunities for artists, and to this end, New Breed’s function as an incubator for emerging talent is extremely valuable. We are particularly pleased that in 2020, after such a challenging few months, we have been able to support Sydney Dance Company to extend this year’s New Breed season to include an additional five performances, offering even more dance lovers the chance to experience this work live, and the choreographers the opportunity to share their creativity and vision over an extended season.

New Breed is co-presented by Carriageworks and Sydney Dance Company, in conjunction with The Balnaves Foundation, whose commitment to the program is vital to the future of Australian contemporary dance. On behalf of Carriageworks I give thanks to Anne Dunn and Rafael Bonachela for their continued hard work and dedication in supporting a range of Australian voices, to The Balnaves Foundation for enabling this critical program, and to the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts for their integral ongoing investment and confidence in our contemporary multi-arts program.

Fostering the talents and celebrating the artistry of those who represent the future of Australian dance is a privilege for us and we are delighted to be able to continue our support of Sydney Dance Company as they secure the future of contemporary dance in Australia.

Neil Balnaves AO The Balnaves Foundation

Blair French CEO, Carriageworks 2

Program 26 November – 12 December Carriageworks

Inertia Jesse Scales

11 mins

Nostalgia Chloe Leong

13 mins

Wagan (Wiradjuri for ‘Raven’) Joel Bray

20 mins

The Cult of the Titans Raghav Handa

23 mins

Please note the final piece in the program is an exploration of cultural appropriation of the swastika from Hindu culture. The work contains images of the swastika, intermittently projected for three minutes at the start of the work, and some militaristic choreography.

There will be a short break before this work begins, giving patrons the opportunity to leave the theatre if they wish.

Please note at various points in the program, haze and strobe/or strobe-like lighting effects will be used.

The program also contains film content depicting cigarette smoking and simulated cigarette smoking on stage.

3

Company Dancers Ariella Casu Isabella Crain Davide Di Giovanni Dean Elliott Riley Fitzgerald Jacopo Grabar Liam Green Luke Hayward Telea Jensen Dimitri Kleioris Rhys Kosakowski Chloe Leong Jesse Scales Emily Seymour Mia Thompson Chloe Young Victor Zarallo

Inertia Jesse Scales

This is a moment of real life.

We may never know how we’ll act when confronted by a crisis. But whether victim or bystander, the power of inertia can be detrimental to any form of help.

The bystander; forever subject to the complicated interaction between our personal disposition and the demands of circumstance.

Unknown pressures manifesting a diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.

For the majority, we shy from action.

Why do we sometimes shackle our moral instincts? Is there a particular set of characteristics that make some more likely to act, while others remain passive? We are all active participants in life after all.

The truth is, only subtle differences separate the inert from the morally courageous. Most of us have the potential to fall into either category, with slight, seemingly insignificant details pushing us either way.

As for the objectified victim; they are at the mercy of those refusing to acknowledge and assist them. Unsure of how to communicate with their emotionally damming observers.

Needing help, but getting none.

You let me go with a curt disregard, worthlessness forced upon. How could you?

You icy blood. You tearless tempests.

Perhaps it’s an alteration of the conscience that forges the path to redemption. Because when one assists, more follow. Breaking the cycle and offering help, the pattern is reversed completely.

For both parties, one question remains. What are the instinctive and conditional decisions needed to be made to release us from this inertia?

All it takes, is one person to show their empathic side.

Choreographer

Jesse Scales

Music

The Rocket Builder (Io Pan) - Jóhann Jóhannsson Let My Key Be C - Nils Frahm, Anne Müller

Costume Designer

Aleisa Jelbart

Lighting Designer

Alexander Berlage

4

Nostalgia Chloe Leong

Nostalgia comes from two Greek words; nostos, meaning “to return home,” and algos, meaning “pain.”

“A paradoxical interplay of the definite and the indefinite in spaces as well as in time that gives rise to nostalgia’s baffling combination of the sweet and the bitter, the personal and impersonal, distance and proximity, presence and absence, place and no-place, imagination and memory, memory and non-memory.”

Zoe Anne Laks (On longing for loss: a theory of cinematic memory and an aesthetics of nostalgia)

and vague, delicate but potent, subjective, temporal and strongly attached to emotion.

A dopamine drip of sorts, it can take an individual bound by the present into a state of fantasy, an insular space that can give rise to both tension and reassurance.

I wanted to invoke the concept of nostalgia, through the relationship of the dancers, the movement, sound and space. It is not for the audience to understand by being literal but for the audience to experience feelings, sensations, atmospheres, details and human conditions that are universal, through their subjective lens.

I was drawn to the idea of nostalgia as a part of the human condition across all people, across all times. It opens the mind to the possibilities within time, creates connections between spaces, and the constructions of our past become malleable, shape-shifting to the needs of the present moment. It can be vivid

To Nonno,

Choreographer

Chloe Leong

Composer

Rob Campbell (The Nights)

Costume Designer

Aleisa Jelbart

Lighting Designer

Alexander Berlage

5

Whom I will always remember with the greatest love and nostalgia.

Wagan (Wiradjuri for ‘Raven’) Joel Bray

Wagan is the Wiradjuri word for crow, or raven. As a child, my father told me a story of how, once-upon-a-time, the crow was more beautifully rainbow-coloured than the lorikeet.

But because of his pride, he was burnt in a fire and so now he is black. Many different mobs have versions of the same story.

amongst the naked limbs of a single tree on a hill. There seemed no Darwinian purpose to their actions; they were neither feeding nor breeding. They were dancing. It was in that moment, I decided to leave my university studies and to become a dancer. I have never looked back.

In Wiradjuri culture, the Wagan is a wise creature: he is cheeky but smart. In the old stories, he is often the problem-solver. In stark contrast European culture is steeped in fear of the ‘Black’. Hitchcock’s iconic film The Birds epitomises this subtly racist fear.

20 years ago, almost to the day, I was out on Wiradjuri Country at dawn. I wandered out and saw a flock of birds swooping and playing

Set to Yuin composer Brenda Gifford’s sublime score, Wagan is a weaving of these three threads. It is simultaneously a personal history, a reclamation of a sacred totem and a re-imagining of an ancient story. My heartfelt thanks to these extraordinary dancers who cocreated this work with me with such generosity and a beautiful sense of play. Together, we offer Wagan in Yindyamarra (honour) to the Elders and the Ancestors.

Choreographer

Joel Bray

Composer

Brenda Gifford

Costume Designer

Aleisa Jelbart

Lighting Designer

Alexander Berlage

Video clips

Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds, Universal Pictures 1963.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship

Roger Benedict, conductor Tim Yu, violin Brian Hong, violin Dana Lee, viola Miles Mullin-Chivers, cello with Kaylie Dunstan, percussion

Sound Engineer

David Kim-Boyle

Arrangement and Sound Design

Tristan Coelho

Mastering

Bob Scott 6

Photo by Rafael Bonachela

7

8

Cult of the Titans Raghav Handa

Dominant ideologies rely on provocative imagery to enliven beliefs – a set of symbols allowing the power to express itself visually, to showcase its appeal and aesthetics and, in many cases, to instil fear. In the 20th century, these symbols were often appropriated from other cultures and used to create fanaticism and cults with their own power and physical language. In this context, no image has been more misused and abused than the Hindu svastika – a symbol of peace and good fortune in India for millennia, the symbol of my family for generations – appropriated by fascists to orchestrate control and domination.

Cult of the Titans questions: how can I let the world know that fascism appropriated part of my cultural identity? How do I shed true light on a symbol many consider evil? Through this work I want to start a process to reclaim and re-sanctify a stolen symbol and “de-weaponise” its seductive pull.

For you, the svastika may be tarnished beyond redemption – a perpetual symbol of darkness.

For me and mine, IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOLDEN!!

The imagery and physical language in this work is derived from family histories passed down to me by my mother – it is not a published or documented history. My family’s texts and stories have informed the imagery and physical language in this piece. By juxtaposing spiritual imagery with language usually associated with dominance, I try to address the elephant in the room.

The svastika for my family suggests the architecture or the complete plan of the universe (the “macrocosm”) and the anthropomorphic individual (the “microcosm”). Within the svastika’s mystical precincts lies the master-key which opens the door of every physical science and every concept of spirituality. It symbolises our human existence, the circle of life circumscribing the four points of the cross – birth, life, death and IMMORTALITY. It is easy in modern culture to see things as “black and white” but sometimes there is another perspective and embracing that perspective can expose the darkness. If I fail to start the conversation, however hard that conversation might be, then the usurper wins. Dance is my language and the place to start my conversation.

Choreographer

Raghav Handa

Composer

James Brown

Rhythm and Tabla

Maharshi Raval

Outside Eye

Vicki Van Hout

Cultural Consultant

Shashi Handa

Lighting Designer

Alexander Berlage

Costume Designer

Aleisa Jelbart

9

Cult of the Titans With Thanks

It is important to state explicitly that Nazi Germany appropriated the swastika, which came to represent the regime which carried out a genocide against the Jewish people and murdered six million Jews, as well as targeting homosexuals, Roma and people with disabilities.

In addition, 27,000 Australian soldiers lost their lives fighting that regime during the course of World War II. There should be no skirting around these truths or softening the import of what the Nazi swastika represents and represented.

Sydney Dance Company owes a sincere debt of gratitude to Vic Alhadeff, Chief Executive Officer of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies for his consultation, and endorsement of the value of the discussion around this important topic.

10

New Breed Partners

Sydney Dance Company Sydney Dance Company has been led since 2009 by Spanish-born Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela and over that time the Company has cemented its reputation as a creative powerhouse. An acclaimed group of 17 dancers present new work each year by Bonachela and other choreographers, designers, composers and musicians. Sydney Dance Company has a broad community beyond the practice and performance of its dancers. We believe in the universality of dance, and with the largest public dance class program in Australia, both online and in-studio, thousands connect each year with the grace, strength and creativity that lives within all of us. Our nation-wide education program offers a strategic curriculum targeting primary and secondary students through to career focused study for pre-professional dancers and university graduates.

Carriageworks Carriageworks is the largest multi-arts centre in Australia. We commission Australian and International artists to make monumental new work that intersects with contemporary ideas.

Reflecting the diverse communities of urban Sydney, our artist-led program is ambitious, radical and always inclusive The Balnaves Foundation The Balnaves Foundation is a private philanthropic organisation established in 2006 by Neil Balnaves AO to provide support to charitable enterprises across Australia.

Dispersing over $3 million annually, the Foundation supports eligible organisations that aim to create a better Australia through education, medicine and the arts with a focus on young people, social disadvantage and Indigenous Australia.

11

Acknowledgements

New Breed is presented on the land of the Gadigal of the Eora Nation. Carriageworks, Sydney Dance Company and The Balnaves Foundation acknowledge the Gadigal people and pay respect to elders past, present and emerging.

Carriageworks partners with Sydney Dance Company to present New Breed through the ongoing support of the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts. The Balnaves Foundation is the New Breed Principal Partner.

Sydney Dance Company welcomes a collaboration with Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Composing Women Program, and the participation of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship.

Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Composing Women The University of Sydney’s award-winning biennial Composing Women Program enables four postgraduate students to work closely with industry partners such as Sydney Dance Company, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras to develop their compositional work and professional skills as part of their degree. The students have the opportunity to have their music workshopped and performed, working intensively as a group and with each artist or organisation over two years.

Participants are mentored by Professor Liza Lim as well as members of the Conservatorium’s composition unit. This program was established

by Professor Matthew Hindson to mark the Conservatorium’s centenary in 2015 and demonstrates deep commitment to creating new pathways for a more inclusive world in music where the incredible diversity of women composing can be celebrated.

Sydney Symphony Fellowship Since its formation almost 90 years ago, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has been a gathering place for some of Australia’s leading musicians. We have also been dedicated to nurturing successive generations of artists.

For the last two decades we have provided support to young artists through the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship. The Fellowship provides training and mentoring programs for young musicians at the early stages of their professional careers.

Selected through a national audition process for the intensive, year-long program, our Fellows work alongside musicians of the Orchestra, performing in mainstage concerts as well as participating in chamber ensemble performances across NSW as part of the Sydney Symphony’s wider community engagement activities.

Since the program’s inception in 2001, Fellowship alumni have won positions in some of the finest orchestras in Europe, Asia and Australia, including twelve past Fellows who now hold permanent positions with the Sydney Symphony.

In 2020, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship features 10 outstanding young artists on strings, winds and brass.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship program is funded through our Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW partnerships and with the additional support from members of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Patron program.

12

JOIN THE CONVERSATION #SDCNewBreed #SDCKeepDancing Facebook @sydneydanceco @carriageworks Youtube @sydneydancecompany @carriageworks Instagram @sydneydanceco @carriageworks sydneydancecompany.com carriageworks.com Photo by Pedro Greig

New Breed Principal Partner

Government Partners

13