Trish + Trisha ( research developments)

My fascination with Trisha Brown began by thinking about what it means to share the name Trish/a. What happens when names are called into a performative space? How do you grapple with the multitude of associations present for both the performer and the viewers/listeners?

By working across traditional performance spaces and radio transmission, the aether became a place where I could spend time with Trisha, allowing us to meet and potentially be in relation to each other.

This practice isn’t about becoming Trisha but instead setting up ways to spend time with her and her archival material. Allowing myself to imagine the in-between and the ways of moving my body and hers. I see the radio as a way for her and myself to meet in the aether – both bodiless – and see what happens.

    Trish                                    Wood
    Trisha                      Brown
    Tricia
Patricia
Pat
Patsy


Trish + Trisha (2018-ongoing)
Contributors:

With thanks to Lee Serle and Cleo Mees.


Trish + Trisha was initiated by an invitation to contribute to First Run, facilitated by Rhiannon Newton and Brooke Stamp at ReadyMade Works.
Trish + Trisha received DAIR support in 2019 from Australia Council of the Arts, Ausdance NSW, Australian College of Physical Education.
Trish + Trisha will continue through March Dance 2021, with a space grant from ReadyMade Works and a career development grant from Australia Council of the Arts to travel to New York and work with the Trisha Brown Dance Company in 2022.

Photo: Lauren Vassallo
Footage: Cleo Mees

Dream Waves and other such matter

We attempt to bring a tangibility to the ephemeral by mapping the topography of an empty space, tracing SIN waves, dreams, spores, signals, breath, and bacteria.

Dream waves and other such matter is a modular contemporary dance work that can be presented in a black theatre space or in a gallery setting.
Building from our responsive residency at Critical Path in 2020, we have developed a 30-min work with Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year 2. 

In 2022 we will continue to develop the work in partnership with the youth company of Dance Makers Collective, Future Makers and Cumberland Council to present the work in a gallery space.





Dream Waves and other such matter (2021)
Contributors:

Concept and Choreography: Patricia Wood
Sound Artist and Collaborator: Benedict Carey
Outside Collaborator: Cleo Mees

Collaborators and Performers from Sydney Dance Company’s Pre Professional Year 2:
Amber Lynch, Amy Clisby, Avalon Ormiston, Christina Stewart, Coco Wood, Isobel Turner, Jackson Biala, Jada Narkle, Jules Hoeberigs, 
Lachlan Doherty, Lily Boston, Morgan Hurrell, Niki Verrall, 
Sarah Edwards, Saskia Ellis, Siobhan Lynch, Sophie Jones, Sophie Roberts, Taiga Kita-Leong, Taji Hennessey, Texas Nixon-Kain, Zoe White.

Supported by Sydney Dance Company and Critical Path.
Photo: Patricia Wood and Omer Astrachan
 

           

Three Body Phasing 

Three Body Phasing foregrounds the body’s ability to act as a transmitter that can receive and send messages to other bodies.

Central to this is the idea that dance transmission also occurs through non-symbolic morphic processes such as resonance, vibration, kinesthetic empathy, and forms of soft telepathy.

Three Body Phasing uses practice-based solutions to the n-body problem, spinning and Trisha Brown’s Locus(1975) to provide a structure where dance lineage, history, and biases are present yet negotiated. It’s about producing a field of resonance where information and transformation are tenuously negotiated between the individuals and group.

Collaborator Cleo Mees wrote a workbook for this project which has been published in ADSR zine.
Click here to view.



Three Body Phasing (2020-ongoing)
Contributors:

This work has received a Critical Path Responsive Residency looking at Mimetic/Memetic Collaborative Practice.

Lead researcher, Collaborator and Composer: Benedict Carey
Collaborator: Cleo Mees
Photo: Kristen Elias

Transmission Solo 

Joy Division once sang “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio”.
I wonder what dance might feel like on the radio?

Can a listener who stumbles across a slightly illegal broadcast have an acute embodied experience of a dance? How can the other senses support that transmission of information?

This live experimental dance performance incorporates radio transmission as a radical source of poetics, transmitting movement across time, space and social memory.

Also embedded within the work is a deep appreciation for dance pioneer, Trisha Brown (a fascination that has continued into other works) and a desire to experiment with representation, place and gesture.

Part of a double bill, shared with Omer Backley-Astrachan as part of March Dance and then presented as part of Dance Massive’s Open Studio. 

Press:

“Wood is an amazing performer.”
“Work was striking, innovative and thought-provoking.”
Lynne Lancaster, Dance Informa, 2019
https://dancemagazine.com.au/2019/03/march-dance-brings-an-intriguing-double-dance-bill/





Transmission Solo (2019)
Contributors:

Performer/ Choreographer: Patricia Wood
Collaborator: Cleo Mees
Composer: Caterina Barberi
Sound design of radio tracks: Megan Clune

Supported through residencies and in-kind space:
Dance massive, Create NSW, Sydney University, ReadyMade Works, Flying Nun and Brand X
March Dance and Ausdance NSW.

With thanks to Cleo Mees, James Winter, Jodie McNeilly, Justine Shih Pearson.
Photo: Natalia Cartney

Dance Pirate Radio

An experimental dance practice set up to question the form’s inherent ephemerality… what could go wrong?

Our group started by enlisting choreographic scores and improvisational frameworks that would allow us to produce a radio broadcast. The goal? Finding a language in and around dance that ignites a multiplicity of histories and subsequent futures. A language we could transmit for dance/aether dancing.

But of course, like all good projects, it took on a life of its own, leaving us to follow along in its wake. We worked on a series of beginnings, practiced telepathy, sent messages into the aether – and received them, danced for pleasure, and read one another collectively through the body.
Did we find a language in the end?
Maybe not, but perhaps it is in the attempt..





Dance Pirate Radio (2018)
Contributors:

Concept and Choreography: Patricia Wood
Outside Eye: Rochelle Haley
Sound Artist: POST TOAST
Collaborators:
Alana Yee, Anja Mujic, Eliza Cooper, Elle Evangelista, Emalyn Knight, Emma Harrison, Gideon Payten-Griffiths, Shana O’Brien and Patricia Wood

Supported by DirtyFeet and ReadyMade Works.

Photo: Hayley Rose Photography