Title:
Slip, Rebecca Jensen
Author:
Sofia Sid Akhmed
Date:
01.06.22

This month Performance Review is partnering with the Keir Choreographic Award (KCA) to bring you interviews with this year’s finalists: Alan Schacher & WeiZen Ho (NSW); Alice Will Caroline (VIC); Jenni Large (TAS); Joshua Pether (WA); Lucky Lartey (NSW); Raghav Handa (NSW); Rebecca Jensen (VIC) and Tra Mi Dinh (VIC). In this interview Sofia Sid Akhmed speaks with Rebecca Jensen about her KCA work Slip, 2022.

Rebecca Jensen, Slip, 2022. Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti.

SSA: Tell me about your practice. What does movement represent for you?

RJ: Many things. Movement can express unnameable things that you can't articulate in any other way. It’s an extension of some inner place – sensory, expressive and cathartic. It’s a means of communication, bringing things together. Practically speaking, dance is something I've done for a very long time, it’s the medium I work with.

SSA: You often engage the public or large groups of dancers in your works. What is your motivation?

RJ: One is creating a sense of community. Dancing with others is intimate. Influences and traces of one another echo through the dance community.

Performing and dancing are quite different acts. In Deep Soulful Sweats, with Sarah Aiken, we invite people to participate in improvised performances, turning the participants themselves into an audience.

Projects like Deep Soulful Sweats and Sinkhole with Jesse Gall and Arini Byng acknowledge that dance can be esoteric, it’s nice to create openings for people to experience it in a more embodied way. These works have had many re-iterations, giving them a really long form. This is completely different to rehearsing and presenting choreography for stage which might happen once and is experienced by an audience sitting back in their chair.

SSA: How do you think the audience experiences your work?

RJ: It’s interesting to question the potential disconnect between the audience’s and dancer’s experience. I imagine some of my works are like watching a certain system at play. Others leave the audience with more concrete clues or provocations. Either way, it is important not to underestimate the audience. When people watch dance, they see quite different things.

I think it was Bojana Kunst who talked about dance as being an equally speculative and practical force in relation to capitalism. There is something powerful about the imagination and imaginative body. In the footsteps of Deborah Hay, I often pose a question “what if?”. What if the physical effects become tangible and manifest themselves out of ideas that I know are not possible and will not read as intended?

For example, in Spawn, we attempted to time-travel by posturing our bodies in particular ways…

SSA: Is that the work where you walk on the wall?

RJ: That’s Explorer! But that also explored similar themes. In that work, I was considering the obsolescence of the human body. As the body is rendered motionless through evolving technologies I again asked, ‘what if the body tried to play out the familiar feelings of supernatural movements we see in video games and film?’. What would it look and feel like?

SSA: Maybe dreams also…

RJ: Yeah exactly. These sensations are kinds of embodied wastes that never get enacted in real life.

SSA: Where do you see your practice is placed in relation to contemporary dance discipline?

RJ: My tertiary training was heavily influenced by the postmodern New York scene and artists like Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and Stephen Petronio via my Australian teachers. I’ve also spent many summers at workshops and festivals throughout Europe. But at some point, it became important to pay attention to context. We are in Australia.

One year Sarah and I ran Deep Soulful Sweats with a theme of ‘Yes Manifesto’ to flip Yvonne Rainer’s ‘No Manifesto’. We recognised that there is a certain privilege to suppress “moving or being moved”. That felt outdated to us, so we decided to say ‘yes’! Yes to spectacle! Yes to virtuosity!

SSA: Who do you consider to be your heroes?

RJ: My peers are my heroes. We support each other and look to each other when we make work. I work with Jo Lloyd, who is just obsessed with dancing! I think of her when I get existential about what I do. I am really inspired by the people who just keep finding the love for dance, pushing the form, experimenting, showing up and doing the work.

SSA: What can we expect from you for this year’s Keir Choreographic Award?

RJ: I am working with composer Aviva Endean, who will perform with me on stage and Romanie Harper who is doing visual design.

This work is considering the relationship between movement, objects and sound. In particular, the ideas of delay, deferral and disembodiment. I am looking forward to it!

Sofia Sid Akhmed is a writer, lawyer and artist living in Naarm. She has a BA in Art History, a Juris Doctor and is currently studying Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her writing has appeared in MeMo and Performance Review.

Rebecca Jensen grew up in Aotearoa and moved to Naarm to study dance at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2007. She creates performance for gallery spaces, theatres and site-specific contexts alongside teaching dance and performing for others, notably dancing with choreographer Jo Lloyd since 2010. In 2012 she formed the ongoing participatory project Deep Soulful Sweats with collaborator Sarah Aiken, creating immersive theatre works and inclusive dance events. Jensen was a 2015 DanceWEB scholar at Impulstanz Vienna and has spent time working in Aotearoa, Korea, Indonesia, Germany and Italy. She is continually inspired by the equally speculative and practical forces of dance practice.

Rebecca Jensen will perform Slip at Carriageworks on 23—25 June and at Dancehouse on 30 June—2 July.

An innovative commissioning partnership between Dancehouse, The Keir Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts, with presenting partner Carriageworks, the KCA is Australia’s largest contemporary dance award showcasing new, choreographic short works by eight Australian artists.

Held over two weeks, this year all eight commissioned works will be presented at both Dancehouse, Melbourne and Carriageworks, Sydney in a rotating program of two bills (four works each).

The KCA is an extraordinary, fully paid opportunity for independent Australian artists to develop and share works with audiences and an esteemed jury of dance luminaries. The jury of international dance leaders tasked with selecting the recipient of the 2022 Keir Choreographic Award and awarding the $50,000 jury prize on Sunday 3 July at Carriageworks includes Daniel Riley (Wiradjuri/Australia); Eko Supriyanto (Indonesia); Laurie Uprichard (Ireland); Lemi Ponifasio (Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Nanako Nakajima (Japan).

Melbourne season at Dancehouse
23 June – 2 July
Book tickets for Melbourne

Sydney season at Carriageworks
23 June – 2 July
Book tickets for Sydney

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