Current Projects
So Far Sonar / Sonar So Far
The uncanny presence of sound - particles vibrating in the air - surrounds us. When we hear, we are both listening to the air and feeling the vibration of a space. The curiosity of how we can be with, support or even disrupt the atmos informs this work. So Far Sonar asks the viewer to engage in a process of feeling, and attune to the presence of the unseen.
Using the resonant frequency of the performance space as a starting point, we map the topography of the ephemeral - exploring sine waves, vibrations and radial signals. This frequency grounds the work, creating an invisible yet tangible foundation from which the sonic landscape can grow, allowing the performers to respond to the peaks and valleys of the sound waves within the space, which although subtle – can be felt. Working with the body in and around the invisible forces, bringing care and attention to what may be difficult to see but tangible to feel, and noticing what is possible to transmit to each other.
Tracing these peaks and valleys, we will develop an alternative map of the space for the audience to follow during the performance. So Far Sonar takes place in the air waves, appearing on axes of resonance, hovering around new age speculation, all the while grounded in the feeling body, sensing the very real matter that physically vibrates in the air around us.
So Far Sonar (2022)
With thanks to Lee Serle, Benedict Carey and Cleo Mees.
So Far Sonar was commissioned by Dance Makers Collective's youth company Future Makers, and performed at Granville Art Gallery, in December 2022.
Choreography: Patricia Wood
Sound Composer and Performer: Alexandra Spence
Performers and Collaborators: Future Makers 2022
Maddy Backen, Sarah Goroch, Beryl La, Matina McAneney, Juliet Saito, Rachelle Silsby, Ashleigh Veitch, Bianca Yeung.
Producer: Dance Makers Collective
Photo: Alex Karaconji
Footage: Mitchell Christie Edited: Patricia Wood
Sonar So Far (2023)
Sonar So Far, an echo of the group version, performed as a duet by Patricia Wood and Alexandra Spence. It was presented by the Cairns Festival at the Courthouse Gallery, in August 2023.
This project has been supported through a residency at the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, the University of Sydney, the Cairns Regional Council, and by the Australian Governments Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance.
Photo: Barbara Campbell
Footage: Alex Karaconji Edited: Patricia Wood
Trish + Trisha
How can one become bodiless?
This is one of the many questions that underlies my fictitious friendship with modern dance pioneer Trisha Brown.
It began by thinking about what it might mean to share a name, Trish/a, accompanied with a soft realisation that through my training as a dancer, I have some pathways and embodied information that can be traced to her.
This practice isn’t about becoming Trisha Brown but instead setting up ways to spend time with her. The aether becomes a site where we potentially meet - both bodiless - and be in relation to each other.
This work attempts to deal with the transference of embodied knowledge from a body to another, mediated through archival material and through non-symbolic morphic processes - resonance, vibration, kinaesthetic empathy and perhaps forms of soft telepathy.
At the moment the research lives and morphs through the actions of reading, dancing, mimesis, conversations, working near and amongst archival footage, CB radio broadcasts, writing letters and a number of short choreographic works.
“Trish Wood… is at the top of her game in terms of both physical/ technical and emotive/intellectual prowess.”
Vicki van Hout, FORM Blog, 2022
https://www.form.org.au/trishtrisha/
Trish + Trisha (2018-ongoing)
With thanks to Lee Serle, Benedict Carey 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 has received DAIR support in 2019 from Australia Council of the Arts, Ausdance NSW, ACPE.
In 2022 Trish + Trisha was supported through a residency at the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, the University of Sydney, March Dance and ReadyMade Works.
Patricia received a career development grant from Creative Australia to travel to New York and work with the Trisha Brown Dance Company in 2022 and also received funding from CreateNSW.
Photos: Lauren Vassallo and Saskia Wilson
Demorphing the Metamorphosis - a collaboration with Alex Karaconji
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect”, this is the first sentence in Franz Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis, translated Susan Bernofsky.
The Metamorphosis is the story of Gregor Samsa’s transformation, situated the process in a state of flux, within liminal spaces of decomposition and becoming, remembering and forgetting, dying and living, renewal and decay. Through choreographic thinking and hand drawn animation, Alex and Patricia will attempt to create visual response that echoes Kafka, in that his prose, while precise and clearly grammatical, often refuses to grant any reader access to some clear substrate of ‘real’ meaning. Using strategies for textual slippage through the use repetition and duration to produce slow transformation, we will attempt to allow the image to be one of abstraction and meaning making.
This work is, in part, informed by Patricia’s experience being a part of Mette Edvardsen’s project, ‘Time has Fallen Asleep in the Afternoon Sunshine’, where a group of people were invited to learn a book by heart of their choosing and come together to form an embodied library. Patricia was been lucky enough to join the project for the Sydney Biennale and OSLOBiennal.
Demorphing the Metamorphosis (2023-ongoing)
With thanks to Mette Edvardsen and Alex Karaconji.
Demorphing the Metamorphosis has been supported by CreateNSW, and through residencies in Bundanon and Arts Iceland in 2023.
This project was also made possible by the Australian Governments Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance.
Demorphing the Metamorphosis will premiere in Sydney in June 2024 at ReadyMade Plus at Pact Theatre.
The History Project - Possible Portals
Everything will be erased in a second.
Language continues to put the world into words. But memory is transmitted not only through story, but in walking, sitting, talking, eating, grabbing hold of objects. It is passed from body to body, in those who wish to remember.
History accumulates in the time and place of the bodies that it encounters, slowly moving through a dissolution of language back into the flesh. It belongs to the slippage where memory can be woven into the complexity of the present.
We will explore different strategies for slow encounters and ways to metaphorically decipher, encircle and transmit an embodied archive, in an attempt to dance with the ghosts.
Elements are exchanged, bodies shift and a portal opens.
The History Project (2024)
The History Project was initiated by an invitation to collaborate with the artistic director of LINK Michael Whaites and the LINK Dancers 2024.
The History Project has received support from AMPA through a space residency.
The History Project will premiere in Perth in September 2024.