Double Beat
FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres
FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres present Double Beat, choreographed by the Helpmann Award winning Sara Black. Double Beat is FORM’s second Dance Bites 2022 season with a stellar all-female cast and creatives: dancers Sophia Ndaba, Isabel Estrella and Samantha Hines, sound designer Alyx Dennison, lighting designer Veronique Bennett and costume designer Aleisa Jelbart.
Written for three women, Double Beat is about the heart and the spirited force of life, it is relentless. Each dancer journeys through one human life, responding to the driving rhythms of their changing internal systems, the rhythms found in nature and the world around them.
“The concept of the work came to me when I had my first ultrasound of my first baby.” says Sara Black “He was only five weeks old and all we could see was this tiny flicker of a heart. There he was a pulse, a rhythm. Before he developed his mind he had a heart and he would live by this changing rhythm for the rest of his life.”
The development of Double Beat has been a highly collaborative process, based heavily on Sara’s keen interest in experimentation and improvisation, which began with a residency supported by independent dance organisation DirtyFeet and partly hosted by FORM in 2018.
Composer Alyx Dennison has created a wonderful score comprising a wide array of beautiful and confronting sounds such as amplified heart beats from the utero, the sounds of climate affected areas mixed with urban environments.
Double Beat aims to have a lasting resonance. The work’s immersive experience will create greater mental and physical awareness of the heart and workings of the body. Double Beat is a positive reminder of the present giving strength for the future, rather than being a driver of anxiety and fear.
FORM Dance Projects is a dynamic hub for Australian contemporary dance based in Parramatta, fostering dance culture in Western Sydney. Throughout 2022 FORM offers four exciting seasons of diverse independent dance as part of its signature presentation program Dance Bites.
Sara Black works in Australia and overseas as choreographer, performer, teacher and collaborator. She has performed and collaborated with Dancenorth, Punchdrunk (UK), Protein Dance (UK), The Australian Ballet, Lucy Guerin Inc, NYID (David Pledger) and Chunky Move.
