The Farm will hold second Bare Bones Workshop Festival at Gold Coast
A 3 Day Workshop Festival Where Everyone is a Student
Expressions of Interest for dancers wanting to attend Bare Bones 2018 on the Gold Coast are open now at thefarm.company and close December 20.
The Gold Coast’s flagship dance theatre company The Farm has put the call out to dancers and makers wanting to join their second annual Bare Bones workshop festival, and are now taking expressions of interest.
The event, which debuted to raves this year, will next be staged February 10-12 at The Farm’s Gold Coast studio as an entree to February’s Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance Brisbane.
The Farm’s co-artistic director Gavin Webber says Bare Bones brings together high-profile teachers and international artists with professional and emerging Australian dancers in a uniquely non-hierarchical structure.
“At Bare Bones everyone is a student,” says Webber, winner of the 2017 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award.
“The classes are built on free exchange of practice and ideas – where what you know and what you don’t know become equally important to learning.”
At Bare Bones 2017, dancers from around Australia worked with facilitators including Hungarian Mate Meszaros, Berlin-based Canadian Laurie Young, Swiss choreographer Simone Truong and Legs on the Wall co-artistic director Joshua Thomson.
Bare Bones 2018 will also feature several star dancers and choreographers in town for Supercell.
Webber says the maiden Bare Bones group enjoyed an amazing collaborative experience that heightened practice and left attendees fired up for Supercell 2017.
“Bare Bones is the perfect accompaniment to Supercell, it’s on the Gold Coast over summer and an opportunity to work with amazing people before hitting the festival,” he says.
Within the hit Bare Bones format, teachers and students explore all aspects of dance, theatre and performance, with facilitators moving from class to class, sometimes guiding and sometimes following.
Each night of the workshop, members of the group stage excerpts of works in progress without lighting, set or wardrobe in order to expose the conceptual “bare bones” of their choreography for discussion and analysis.
“Each time a performance was stripped of theatrical artifice and made accessible, it became this incredible starting point for dialogue between emerging artists and established practitioners,” says Webber.
The Farm’s Berlin-based co-director Grayson Millwood says the 2018 Bare Bones will be structured to replicate the buzz of the 2017 debut.
“We have been looking forward to another Bare Bones since the day the last one ended,” Millwood says.
“There will be lots of new faces with new ideas, but one thing we want to keep is the intimacy… a small group that work, teach and learn together.”
The 2018 staging will be open to about 20 dancers, with guest teachers and facilitators to be announced closer to the date.
The full list of Bare Bones facilitators will be announced with the full Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance Brisbane program in early December.
Supercell Brisbane curator Kate Usher says Bare Bones builds a “critical mass” of dance activities around the festival.
“Bare Bones is the professional development offering for artists,” she says. “The opportunity to put dedicated time and space into creative play, process and peer-to-peer learning is vital to the ongoing development of a rich and diverse cultural practice.
“And linking in Supercell’s signature artists from Australia and abroad is a wonderful way to feed new ideas and aesthetics into a space where everyone is equal, present and open to exploration.”
Apply for Bare Bones at www.thefarm.company/bare-bones-1
