Do you express your most intimate thoughts on social media? How vulnerable do you allow yourself to be in a public forum? New dance theatre work Intimacy by Torque Show is taking intensely private experiences and making them very public, as part of the Malthouse Helium 2014 season in Melbourne and Unlimited at the Southbank Centre in London.
Torque Show collaborators – Ingrid Weisfelt, Vincent Crowley and Ross Ganf – make a powerful team of choreographers, directors, dramaturges, producers and performers. Their first work Malmö received rave reviews at its sold out season for the 2012 Adelaide Festival. Dene Kermode from Aussie Theatre wrote: ‘The most exciting experience you can have in theatre. Brutally real, moments of utter beauty and fragility surrounded by violence and heartbreak…To say Malmö is ‘unexpected’ doesn’t do it justice’.
Intimacy is Torque Show’s latest piece, which combines the working relationship built by Ingrid, Vincent and Michelle Ryan during their time as colleagues at Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre, with the capacity for Torque Show to push the boundaries of dance theatre and audience relationships. Also collaborating with Torque Show on this project are Melbourne musicians Lavender vs Rose (Simon Eszeky and Emma Bathgate), who provide a unique musical language for the work. For Ingrid Weisfelt, ‘Intimacy takes some of our most private personal and vulnerable moments and examines them in public through a prism of coping with disease and disability. It is an unashamedly confronting, heartfelt work with all the breathtaking beauty and haunting fragility of what it is to be human.’
While Michelle’s expressive capacity is undeniable, her diagnosis with MS at the peak of her dance career led her to questioning her identity as an artist: a struggle she describes in an article for Access2Arts. The Courier Mail described her performance in the Expressions Dance Company’s Solo – Festival of Dance season: ‘The story of Ryan’s arms, gestures and gaze eloquently told in Falling … broke your heart.’ Her experiences, physical eloquence and vulnerability provide the emotional centre point for Intimacy.
Ingrid Weisfelt feels that the Malthouse season is a significant move forward for Torque Show and artists with disability: ‘Helium is designed as a season for contemporary performing artists to self-present work in a supportive environment. Utilising a theatrical form that celebrates physical perfection, Michelle’s abilities and limitations provides the Malthouse Theatre with an opportunity to share her experience and story within the mainstream contemporary art world and not just within the context of dance in disability arts. Michelle’s captivating performance and obvious courage will provide inspiration not only to people living with a disability, but to all of us.’
As a result of conversations at APAM 2014 with Unlimited Programmer Wendy Martin, Intimacy will be traveling to London after the Malthouse season to perform at the Unlimited Festival. This will be the first Australian presentation to be programmed at Unlimited, a three year program with Jo Verrent as Senior Producer and key partners Creative Scotland, British Council, Southbank Centre and DaDaFest.
Ingrid is thrilled to be presenting Intimacy at Unlimited: ‘It is rare that independent work receives opportunities such as these and we are leaping at the chance to present our work internationally. Michelle is living with a disability; however Intimacy is more about the universal human quest for real intimacy and connection with others rather than a work about disability itself. Constraint and struggle make for good drama and storytelling and Unlimited provides a high profile, well supported platform for such stories to be told, felt, seen and heard.’
Intimacy is playing at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne from 13 – 23 August and the Southbank Centre, London from 4 – 5 September.
Simon Eszeky, Michelle Ryan, Vincent Crowley and Emma Bathgate in Intimacy by Torque Show in collaboration with Michelle Ryan
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