PLACE MAKERS 2021
STRUT and Fremantle Biennale embarked on a new partnership in 2021, celebrating dance, movement and the bilya (river). Through STRUT’s PLACE MAKERS WA program, two artists were invited to create new works for the Fremantle Biennale, embracing contemporary dance, place and changing landscapes.
PLACE MAKERS WA offers an innovative development and presentation pathway for WA independent dance and physical theatre artists into CROSSING 21, with a key focus on place making activations, site-specificity and creating work for environments, non-theatrical venues and in nature.
The selected artists for 2021 were: Brooke Leeder and Zee Zunnur and May Greenberg.
Maitland Schnaars, Brooke Leeder and Dancers, and Azariah Felton united, in collaboration with Ian Wilkes and Humphrey Bower to tell the story of WA Chief Engineer, C Y O’Connor’s work on the Goldfields Pipeline that carries water 330km from Perth to Kalgoorlie; a project that ended with O’Connor taking his own life due to an indigenous curse placed upon him. A curse that drove him mad, and ultimately to his death.
Choreographers and dancers May Greenberg and Zee Zunnur united with composer Felicity Groom, and dramaturg Geordie Crawley for their new work Uncountable, which explores the excesses and weight of consumerism through movement. Visitors are invited to journey with the dancers and asked to share in their burdens, in a dynamic new work which questions wealth, stability and remembers the weightlessness of water.
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