Twinships

TWINSHIPS SOUNDTRACK NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE THROUGH DREAMLAND RECORDINGS!
An Australian independent CDr/mp3 label operating since 2002. Covering such music as: experimental, ambient, drone, dark ambient, noise, instrumental and many other types of atmospheric, outside the box musics. The label is a one person "make on demand" operation with the purpose of providing top quality sound/music with minimal aesthetic & packaging.
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TWINSHIPS

Performer & Choreographer: Deanne Butterworth
Sound Design: Michael Munson
Lighting Design: Rose Connors Dance

Premiered: July 2010
Length: 45 minutes

An attempt to create two simultaneous worlds, the sonic and the physical, in order to challenge the way we observe and perceive people. A jewel-like reflective centerpiece that projects images of botanical and architectural landscapes is both set and metaphor. As Butterworth dances her solo, she manipulates the mirrored psyche of the Twinships’ worlds to expose notions of perception, truth and misrepresentation.

Butterworth has been described as “a master of seductive lyricism” and her dance style, replete with both restrained elegance and explosive gesture, as “effortlessly massive” (Real Time). In Twinships, she juxtaposes a statuesque angularity with a rhythmic kinesis, like a heartbeat that quickens then slows, responding to external and internal stimuli.

Some Notes on Twinships:
TWINSHIPS is one result of a six-month Housemate residency at Dancehouse. Over a period of six-months, I proposed a program for working that included others in addition to me working in isolation in the studio. When I started the residency I did not set out to make a work for this season, I did not want that to be the only thing. My intention was to find and develop a practice and have others involved in that. So, I set up something called, ‘Groups:Meetings’ which operated alongside my solo time in the studio. During ‘Groups:Meetings’ I would show others a little of what I had been working on. What came from those moments of showing something and the discussion that followed has influenced TWINSHIPS. These meeting ran for the first couple of months and then I decided I wanted to be far more isolated and continue working alone.

In the middle of the residency I ran a workshop called, ‘Changing Shapes and Shifting Structures.’ That workshop has also influenced TWINSHIPS. Conversely, back in February, at the beginning, before the first of the ‘Groups:Meetings’ sessions, the sound designer, Michael Munson and I played a game from everybody’s toolbox. To some extent, the starting point for the work was this game- talking about the completed performance work six-months before it existed: the look of it, the sound, the mood, the images, the drama. It was just brainstorming really but was also an attempt to discover more of one another’s respective mediums and reveal habits in the approach to making work. Evidence of some of this initial dreaming happens now but the real evidence lies in the possibilities of how you decide to view this.

Supported by:
Dancehouse through a Housemate Residency, Besen Family Foundation, City of Yarra, Arts Victoria, Australia Council.
photo credit: Rohan Young

TWINSHIPS, by Ruth Learner
An illuminated glass ship floats in darkness – projecting images of another world, a peopled world. Around the ship, the hum and flutter of insects and night birds create a dissonance, a disturbance of air. Deanne emerges from the darkness, which is soon bathed in red. She stretches the space rendering the dissonance shrill. Her figure reaches up and retracts with the rhythm and repetition of metamorphosis. Deanne shapes this changing into a pattern of stopping, walking, repeating the stretch, the retraction – this Sisyphus condemned to life’s laborious task. The shrill sound amplifies into a gusting wind from an alien landscape. Deanne, stark in the redness, throws her limbs into spasms of movement. She jerks like a kinetic doll and then flows with large gestures and martial art like elegance, drawing her space – again pushing and pulling, attracting and resisting. Rather than a condemnation of life, there evolves a kind of measuring, a mapping of space. She appears to be negotiating a circle. As the light becomes intense orange – the relentless hum of a heatwave swallows her. The stage darkens. Bellbirds ring and drums begin to pound.

Deanne’s pulsing body fights for her space, now filled with chimes, clashing triangles, and a rising cadence like shrieking cicadas; she kicks out, stretches, whirls, bends and defends her territory. The pink light throws shadows across the far wall and she multiplies into three. The ringing breaks into scraping and fluttering – more background dissonance as Deanne’s measured movements become more frenetic. The noise screaming now, she turns and meets her audience, red light flickers over her face revealing the dark contours of her skull. This portent of death invokes the mantra-like song of a church organ. The stage darkens; a backlight silhouettes her body. She is still, she pivots, and she is still. She is a statue. She is statuesque. She is monumental.

White light engulfs the stage. Voices drone behind slow motions. Deanne poses and gestures, stops, turns, walks; mapping the circle over and over again. The muted narration and sounds of bubbling water accompany her ritual, and I wonder if she is making space for a kind of birth – perhaps a death. She begins to stretch and then fall backward – a graceful fall, a measured fall. There is lightness again – birds call and music bubbles. The light now falls evenly and we gravitate towards redemption – towards balance. Deanne crouches and stretches, feeling her way in this new skin. She senses her freedom, her flexibility, and moves lightening fast, then flops loose and open. She falls back, twists and rests, and repeats this cycle, jerking a little, dying a little. The stage and Deanne and the glass ship are clear. Birds, bubbling brooks, and bright song take us to a slow languid finish. Life goes on.

By Ruth Learner
October 2010

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