MirrorMirror
MirrorMirror — a collaboration between Stalker Artistic Director David Clarkson and dancer-choreographer Dean Walsh.
Stalker’s trademark spectacular physical theatre returns to Sydney in its stunning new production MirrorMirror at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta from October 2 to 10 2009.
The season will take place hot on the heels of the company’s sold out avant premiere of the work at Netherlands leading arts festival Noorderzon, August 20, 21 and 22.
It will be an aerial-based collaboration between Stalker Artistic Director David Clarkson and dancer choreographer Dean Walsh — a dynamic duet where the choreography takes flight through an aerial-based tracking system and explores more personal and poetic notions of ending.
The work is the third in a triptych of works conceived by David Clarkson that explores the notion of ending. The first, Four Riders, explored the end of the world according to the Bible’s Revelation The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. The second, Red, is a sci-fi tribute to the end of the world as the earth is engulfed by the sun.
How we imagine our own mortality and how our identity is not fixed but is spread over time, place and space. From the beginning of life to the end — from the ground to the air — Clarkson and Walsh and their puppet counterparts evoke images of the spirits of our ancestors as they glide dreamlike across the stage reflected in a mirror-like pool of water.
Inspiration for the work came from an experience Clarkson had during a visit to his great-grandmother’s ancestral home in Ireland.
While on a hillside in remote County Cork I realised I had dreamt of this place 12 years earlier and I wondered if I had dreamt my grandmother or she had dreamt me. Do we carry the ghosts of our ancestors with us? Are these memories carried in our flesh and can we summon these ghosts through our dance?
Development has taken place over several years in Australia and Ireland (with assistance of Irish academic and dramaturge, Bernadette Sweeney) and at the Boulder Aerial Festival in the USA.
MirrorMirror is a devised and collaborative work with all the artists involved in contributing to the conception and the creation. A key feature is the aerial tracking system developed by Max Myer which presents the audience with a variety of ways to view the performer’s bodies. Another key feature is the ethereal transparent body masks made of the performers which represent the ghosts of our ancestors, the spirit that inhabits the body, and the fragmentation of identity.
Clarkson brings over 25 years experience to his role as Artistic Director of Stalker. Established 1989, Stalker creates contemporary physical theatre and has pioneered challenging new approaches to Australian physical performance incorporating experimental dance, new circus, innovative approaches to dramaturgy, and interdisciplinary and intercultural practices and processes. Walsh has been an influential participant in the Australian independent contemporary dance and theatre community since 1991 initiating numerous projects and devising/performing in 17 solo works.
Season
- October 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (7.30pm)
- Riverside Theatres, cnr Church and Market Streets, Parramatta
- Tickets $25
- Bookings 8839 3399 or riversideparramatta.com.au
Production
- David Clarkson & Dean Walsh
- Performers: Paul Selwyn-Norton
- Choreographic Consultant/Dramaturge: Sydney Boahaniche
- Lighting Design and Puppet Consultant: Kassandra Boswell
- Puppet Fabricator/Sculptor: Peter Kennard
- Composer: Max Myer
- Tracking Concept Design: Joey Ruigrok
Media Enquiries
Emma Collison Publicity, 02 9362 9700, 0418 584 795, emma@emmacollison.com