Dancing PLUS
Curator: Jane McKernan, ReadyMade Works
PACT Centre for Emerging Artists June 13-14, 2025
Performances by:
Review by Phaedra Brown
This rich evening of dance was described by Jane McKernan, Director of ReadyMade Works (RMW), as “Dancing plus… Dancing made more visible”. The ‘plus’ refers to the extra production support that PACT Centre for Emerging Artists in Erskineville provides, with their well-equipped theatre space, but it also refers to the ‘plus’ of RMW’s regular Happy Hour that, across the year, makes more visible the vast array of weekly goings-on within the walls of their studio in Ultimo. RMW is a place known for its essential contribution to the maintenance of dance in inner city Sydney. This artist run space offers various programmes and residencies that support the deep investigation of dance practice by local artists. Happy Hour’s guest curated short works-in-progress program is a “platform for encountering the diverse and uncompromising work being made by local dance artists”. Happy Hour Plus ups the ante and is curated by Jane McKernan.
At this year’s Happy Hour Plus, the third presented by RMW with PACT, three works by a wonderfully varied group of choreographer/dancers were offered: Ivey Wawn’s Feeling in a Triangle, Mitchell Christie’s Off the Map and Within by Valdi Yudibrata and Will Mak.
These works were vastly different in approach however all spoke to a very personal interrogation of each artist’s practice and a deep study of dancing.
Feeling in a Triangle Ivey Wawn
Ivey Wawn’s work Feeling in a Triangle began the night’s performances.
The lights snap on, revealing that Ivey has arrived on stage already, fallen into place in the darkness. After lying face down, breathing for a moment, different body parts begin to gently lift and lower—a shin, a shoulder, and eventually Ivy’s head lifts before she rises out of the floor, and comes to sit at a microphone placed at the front of the stage. A mirror is on the floor reflecting the microphone and Ivey, casting light and shadows up onto her face.
She prepares, taking in air as if about to speak. Waking up the breath in her mouth. Chuckling as the microphone falls out of place. A bird chirps in the rafters and she considers it part of the performance. She stares into the audience searching for faces in the darkness; a single note comes out of the silence. Then it comes again, in the same tone. Ivy begins to sing a broken melody. We hear “Falling is a feeling…Failing is a feeling.” She plays with the length and pitch of each syllable, searching for the right version of each note in real time, pressing the breath out of her lungs, nearing the end of their capacity. You can imagine how each note feels to produce.
An extended sung note plays over the speaker. Ethereal yet comforting vocalisations, music created by Megan Clune that shifts the previous spacious silence as Ivy sits.
She begins reaching her arms for the sky and the sides of the room. Shifting from position to position, she arrives in a shape, taking a brief pause to consider where she has landed before moving on. Her body is searching for something in these pauses – a feeling? a connection? perhaps a memory? This unhurried searching is interrupted by small quakes and falls.
Ivy kicks off her shoes and socks. Laughing, smiling occasionally. Catching, releasing, interrupting her own movement. Considering her task deeply then discarding it. Playing then urgently investigating. Purposeful and sporadic. She pauses on all fours, one arm reaching back towards the mirror, then resumes her dance of falling and feeling.
Oscillating through sensations, Ivey’s consideration is infectious. She moves through either knowing and understanding, or seeking to know and understand. I was desperate to know what she was looking for but at the same time took so much joy in watching the humanness of her search. Ivey works with a deep sense of curiosity that made me want to also experience the sensations she was moving through.
The music fades out. Snapped out of her investigation, she puts her socks and shoes back on quickly before leaving the space.
Throughout the work Ivey wore a white t-shirt that in bright bold letters read ‘GAZA’. Whether directly related to the work or not, this shirt is an important frame through which to view a work that called its viewers to empathy.
In Feeling in a Triangle, we get to see a body, but also very much a human, working through sensation. If we are in an era of disassociation and numbness, this piece was an exact antidote, drawing us into a world of urgent feeling and acting.
Off the Map Mitchell Christie
Pink and purple light shines on Mitchell Christie who is caught in a shifting rhythmic groove. He stares straight into the audience and repeats a pattern of small shifts in the pelvis, knees, and heels—a small, serious, boogie.
As this groove continues, one hand raises to his belly and then snakes behind his back. The pattern in his legs changes to a gentle rock back and forth. He follows the threading arm to turn around and the pattern resumes facing the back. A more complex pattern arises, repeated rhythmic placing, holding, folding, and falling in a zig zag across the stage. The movement becomes more complex again, the repeating structure now dropped. Limbs reach on beat, the body falls and suspends, movements get extended and interrupted. Mitchell ties himself in knots before expertly and gracefully unravelling, like he’s engaged in a pre-meditated game of Twister. There is a task at play: constructing and deconstructing shapes, building then disrupting sequences.
The choreography requires Mitchell to continuously go further than expected: further coiled, further reaching, squatting all the way to the floor and suddenly standing to his full height. The movement is not robotic, but it is human-oid, almost uncanny when set alongside the groovy, driving music by Vatican Shadow. The sound begs for freedom and fun, and the strictly designed movement is resisting at every turn.
Mitchell’s face stays emotionless throughout. Even through the most precarious balances he seems to remain unphased. We can see his background in and allegiance to Cunningham Technique. He’s a passionate Cunningham teacher and in this work we are watching that influence: movement itself as subject and object of enquiry and performance. As Merce Cunningham explained: “It’s when dancing gets awkward that it starts to get interesting” and this is where the thrill in watching Mitchell’s precarious movement lies.
Structurally, the work begins with contained restraint, but it branches out to take up more space, then is reigned back into the same small, serious groove at the end. Save one difference, perhaps. At the end almost imperceptibly (to the point where I may have imagined it) I thought I saw Mitchell’s lips moving. Maybe he was counting, or reciting a sequence, a gloriously tiny glimpse into the human behind the dancer and the rules behind the patterns?
Within Valdi Yudibrata & Will Mak
In this three-work evening the audience moved for the final piece by Valdi Yudibrata and Will Mak. For Within we were seated in a circle on the stage, looking in at the performers from all sides. From the outset this created a sense of collaboration and camaraderie that was felt throughout the piece. This is indicative of the street dance background shared by Valdi and Will, and indeed of many cultures that prefer to witness and contribute to dance in the round.
Valdi and Will begin in silence, facing each other. They are both watching and waiting for the other to move. Small shifts begin in their shoulders and fingers. Their impulse to move is based on cues from the other. Gradually learning from each other, they begin to build a shared movement vocabulary of isolation and syncopation. They circle each other.
Still in silence, the sound of their feet on the floor, the movement of their clothes and their breath creates the first soundscape. This dancer-created-sound is maintained throughout and propels the piece forward. It creates a great amount of silence and stillness amongst flurries of activity.
They part and then meet each other again, face to face and closer together. As they circle we start to see the similarities and differences in their movements. Are these people two sides of the same coin? Friends or competitors?
A stamp signals the breaking of the circle.
Now next to each other, Valdi rubs his hands together, generating a rhythm. He continues this rhythm, hitting his body, then clapping. He plays with timing and the emphasis of beats. Will showcases his Popping expertise, playing with speed and intensity. They swap roles. Throughout this section the body percussion and movement correlate, but sometimes one dancer takes licence to move outside the bounds of the rhythm and through the beat.
Valdi unfolds a scarf and ties it around his waist. Valdi is a student of traditional Indonesian dance, as a way of exploring and reconnecting with his personal heritage. In this work he is exploring the meeting points between his Indonesian dance and street dance lineages.
Hitting the fabric of his trousers that stretches between his legs, slapping his forearms, jumping and stamping in a grounded shifting around the space, Valdi creates powerful punctuation to his movement that, while different to what we have seen, is reminiscent of the previous sections in its rhythm and syncopation.
Will echoes the sounds of Valdi’s solo as he picks up a shirt and hat. He uses the brushing of the fabric and the pulling taut of the hat to replicate Valdi’s percussion with a softer tone.
Throughout Within, elements of costume become symbolic of the dancers’ exploration of identity. In a poignant moment, Will meets Valdi on one side of the circular audience. Will offers Valdi a cap. Valdi seems at first reluctant to receive this symbol of street dance lineage, but eventually puts in on. It seems to signal a combining of style and culture, but also acceptance and solidarity. A way of showing that these two have joined forces. As their programme note states, Within is exploring identity “beyond birthplace, tracing the layers of history, memory, and movement that inform who we are. Through the language of street dance, we embody this shared journey—merging movement with existence”.
As the work concludes sharing becomes weaving, in and out of each other’s space, rising and falling; sometimes in confinement and conflict, sometimes in spacious and mutual support. After what has, up ‘til now, been a very structured investigation of each dancers’ individual identity, we finally see their shared forms woven together.
The final moment is a celebration. Music blares and both dancers let loose. They call friends from the audience to join them up on the stage, and Within concludes the night’s performances on a note of, above anything else, community.
Happy Hour has a long tradition within the programming of RMW. It began in 2016, and each iteration in the RMW studio shows the range of work being made in Sydney—from contemporary dance to street dance to the myriad of other forms that make up our Sydney based dance community. The plus of this Happy Hour Plus asked the audience to invest in three very different pieces as studies and to witness these dancers deeply at work. This was a night of dance that not only made the diversity of our local performers’ artistic investigations visible but allowed us to witness the earnestness PLUS rigour PLUS curiosity PLUS joy with which they created their work.
HAPPY HOUR PLUS 2025
PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, June 13-14, 2025
Curator: Jane McKernan
Works Presented:
Ivey Wawn Feeling in a Triangle
Mitchell Christie Off the Map
Valdi Yudibrata & Will Mak Within
Sound Designers:
Megan Clune
Vatican Shadow
Lighting:
Theo Carrol
Nick Vagne
Phaedra Brown is an independent dancer, choreographer, and producer. Her current practice draws on a collage of elements from movement, choreography and writing.