Radical Transparency
WE ARE HERE Company
FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres present Radical Transparency by the WE ARE HERE Company, with three performances at Riverside Theatres, Friday March 18, 2022 (10.30am and 8pm) and Saturday March 19 2022 (8pm) as part of Dance Bites 2022 and March Dance.
WE ARE HERE Company is a breakthrough contemporary dance company, directed by Emma Saunders. It is a platform for independent dance makers, many from Western Sydney, to experiment and develop their choreographic and performance practice, led by Saunders.
Radical Transparency marks the first Dance Bites Season presented by Form Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres, for Emma Saunders and the WE ARE HERE Company. Emma directed ENCOUNTER, a new outdoor site specific dance work, commissioned and produced by FORM Dance Projects with a world premiere of ENCOUNTER SOUTH at Four Winds Festival in 2019 and ENCOUNTER at Sydney Festival 2020. Following ENCOUNTER Emma was FORM’s associate artist 2020-2021 creating the WE ARE HERE Company. She is widely known as co-founding member/choreographer/performer of the award-winning Sydney trio, The Fondue Set along-side Jane McKernan and Elizabeth Ryan.
Radical Transparency explores the intersection between honesty and artifice, wild and tame, light and dark, process and performance, raw and manufactured, and how on earth in this day and age we are going to present new dance work that is sustainable, wild, buoyant and afloat while it feels like everything is sinking.
“We play with constructing new identities” says Emma “we often rehearse in old 80s costumes from my eisteddfod or Fondue Set days, plus the dancers’ own costumes. I love the interplay to evolve from super short, pure dance sequences on my own body, that might be feeling a little sore or exhausted, and then seeing how that can transfer into something more manufactured, magical and crafted with the group.”
Saunders’ focus is on the simplicity of dance and the complexity of choreography. Utilising a visceral, instinctive attack, her work is immediate, often working with humour, everyday movement, text, repetition, deconstruction, duration and abstraction. Emma brings her wealth of dance experience, energy and generosity to the WE ARE HERE Company.
