Depth of Field 2015
Created as an outdoor site-specific work, Depth of Field was a heroic and poetic interaction between three dancers and a city. Throughout the performance, as the city changed tempo, ordinary life shifted and morphed to reveal the unseen. Slowly, across the duration of a sunset, the connections between the dancers and the city emerged as 15 volunteers, two dogs and a toddler joined the random traffic of passers-by. These parallel realities signalled a city that rarely stops; the dancers becoming warriors in a quest for urban survival.
Creative Team (Premiere Season 2015)
Concept, Direction & Choreography Anouk van Dijk
Costume Design Mel Page
Sound & System Design Marco Cher-Gibard
Music Ben Frost, Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason, The Bug
Dramaturgy Anny Mokotow
Lighting Consultants Michael Carr & Blair Hart
Choreographic Secondment Luigi Vescio
Additional Creative Team (Aarhus 2017)
Live Sound Design Marcel Wierckx
Additional Costume Design Jessica Helbach
Original Performers James Vu Anh Pham, Niharika Senapati, Tara Jade Samaya
Additional Touring Performers Luigi Vescio
Artistic Director Anouk van Dijk
Executive Producer Catherine Jones
Company Producer Hillary Coyne
Production Manager Michael Carr
Stage Manager Blair Hart
World Premiere
6 March 2015 (Melbourne)
Touring Season
2017 Aarhus
Presenters
Presented with Malthouse Theatre
In association with Dance Massive
“Highly sophisticated and fascinating… stunning cast of performers” The Age. Read More.
“Features moments of true dance magic.” ArtsHub. Read More.
A note from Anouk van Dijk
The forecourt, once a thriving morass for indigenous clans, turned after settlement from a tent city to an industrial wasteland and became a somewhat forgotten landscape on the edge of the growing metropolis of Melbourne. Now the forecourt is again a place of purpose, in which artists, students and inhabitants pass and wander. It is a thoroughfare that the dancers and their neighbours use daily. In its expanse it offers up a sense of multiple cities, the detailed intricacy of the every day, and the city’s endless stream of traffic and its anonymity. As a choreographer I wonder, how does the body respond to the stillness and the continuous motion? I wonder about the quiet magic, what is here that is obvious and what is less obvious; can the eye be choreographed to see particular details and still retain its autonomy to search for its own point of focus?
Depth of Field evokes personal and communal stories that are both dramas and vectors – trajectories to personal and shared histories. The city, its dynamic and rhythm, its secrets and its past, passes through the dancers as they evoke elements of their cultural histories and modern identities. They enact an exchange between the external choreography of the city – pedestrians, traffic, weather – and an embodied inner choreography. The dance responds to its surroundings and yet has its own dynamic. It is the city’s energy translated, the unspoken and the spoken – the space between people made tactile. We allow our focus to be pushed and pulled by the performance, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. As ghosts rise from the dusty surface of the city, the space unfolds, allowing us to project our own imaginings onto the haze of the cityscape
L-R: Niharika Senapati, James Vu Anh Pham (standing), Tara Jade Samaya Image: Jeff Busby
James Vu Anh Pham Image: Pippa Samaya
