This is an opportunity for potential patrons of the Contemporary Performing Arts to support my participation in the 2009 Deborah Hay Solo Performance Commissioning Project to facilitate my performance of this renowned work.
All patrons receive program acknowledgment every time the solo is performed by any of the participating dancers in theatres, at festivals and forums internationally and throughout Australia.
WHAT IS THE DEBORAH HAY SOLO PERFORMANCE COMMISSIONING PROJECT?
Deborah Hay is a renowned American choreographer and her distinguished works are performed all over the world. For this project selected dancers commission a solo dance from Deborah Hay. She guides and coaches them in the performance of the solo during an 11-day period in a residency in Findhorn, Scotland. Each participant signs a contractual agreement to a daily solo practice of the new piece, for a minimum of three months before their first public performance. Public Performance of this work by certified dancers selected for the project, has been highly received in theatres, at festivals, including the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival, and forums internationally for the last ten years of Deborah Hays extensive and illustrious career.
What is unique about this project is that the dancers must raise the commissioning fee from within his/her community. Community, whether family, friends, local, state, or national granting agencies, corporations, become the patrons for each dance. All patrons receive program acknowledgment every time the solo is performed by any of the participating dancers.
IF YOU WISH TO BECOME A PATRON OF CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE ART AND SUPPORT ATLANTA EKE FOR THE DEBORAH HAY SOLO COMMISSIONING PROJECT 2009
All patrons receive program acknowledgment every time the solo is performed by any of the participating dancers in theatres, at festivals and forums internationally and throughout Australia. To become a patron of the Deborah Hay solo performance commissioning project, please email me at atlantaeke@gmail.com
NEW YORK TIMES
“A master performer sensitive to the slightest shift of imagery and tone, Deborah Hay has continued in the postmodern tradition of the Judson Dance Theater, which she helped to found, for more than four decades now."
MAIKHAIL BARYSNIKOV
"There are aspects of dance performance that I had always accepted as a given. Working with Deborah Hay has deepened my understanding of what we do as dancers. She has helped bring a greater vitality to the stage.”
atlanta eke
Dr Sally Gardner School of Communications and Creative Arts Deakin University, Melbourne:
“I taught Atlanta during her undergraduate years. I have also followed her development with interest since she completed her degree. Atlanta has made a lasting impression on me as a committed, intelligent and creative student and as a dancer and performer. She was outstanding as a collaborator in choreographic processes, as a focused and technically able performer, and as a thoughtful and brave dance-maker. On completion of her degree she was successful in winning a place in a competitive, intensive choreographic workshop with Ros Warby.”
Simon Ellis 2008 Place Prize Finalist, Skellis Productions Choreographer/Artist. PhD University of Melbourne:
“An outstanding student: intelligent, disciplined, questioning, and certainly the strongest mover and performer in her class. She possesses a clean technique, and is capable of refined and complex physical actions, whilst remaining sensitive to embodied and present states.”
Shaun McLeod. Choreographer, Improviser and Lecturer in Dance at School of Communications and Creative Arts Deakin University, Melbournen :
“Atlanta has always stood out as a young dancer with a strong focus to achieve her objectives and the physical abilities to do this. She was always the student that others looked to for inspiration or for example of how to conduct oneself in an environment where self-motivation is important. This was in part because of her creative capacities as a dance and choreography student but also because of her unwavering dedication to the task of learning. As such she was an absolute pleasure to work with, giving of herself and contributing to the dance process in intelligent and sensitive ways. As a dancer she has an ability to integrate movement patterns and sequencing in a deeply satisfying way. She engages with the movement, getting to know it from any angle or perspective and re-working it in her body until she knows the thing that it is. This means that the movement can become more than it may have originally been or she brings out its hidden qualities, adding nuance and personal inflections.”
At the completion of my degree, Bachelor of Contemporary Arts, Majoring in Dance, I have travelled to Europe to further my education in the field of contemporary dance and to find a network of like minded colleagues in which I can share cultural diversity and be challenged by various and innovative attitudes. I continually look to expand my horizons and develop ongoing dialogues with artists from all over the world and feed in and out of communal creative sources
Over the past 18months I have been actively collaborating and performing throughout the UK and European independent dance community as well as undertaking multiple workshops, participating in forums and taking professional class. In May 2008 I travelled to northern France to visit PAF, a Performing Arts Forum initiated by artist Jan Ritesma, in a converted convent over looking a small farming town, St Ermes. At PAF I participated in Deborah Hays Chorographic Research Project. The intelligent deliberations and enriched exchanges between Deborah and the nineteen dancers participating in the project reconfirmed for me the importance of critical thought in my work and left me feeling completely energised. I am continually stimulated both mentally and physically by the theoretical exertion to comprehend conceptual ideas.
Deborah Hays solo work describes dance as a means to be in relationship. My body is political. Through various experimentations, working with concepts of desire, deterioration and immortality of the body I have long sort to find methods to dissipate the notion of being objectified as a performer and a young female dancer. Deborah Hays philosophy within this solo work guides me to perceive myself and the audience at a cellular level as a political act of equality. “Reconfiguring my three dimensional body into 300trillion cells.” In the performance of this solo there is no longer a power relationship between performer and audience, instead there is simply an open invitation to exchange.
Deborah Hays solo work has led me to investigate the physiology of perception through focusing on the right hemisphere of the brain, activating neurological activity to generate new awareness. My body is science. By intentionally choosing to work with the right hemisphere of the brain in dance I influence how I see and how I am seen without distinguishing the boundaries of the body but enlarging the perception of self.
My artistic way of working has in turn been shifted to concentrating on process rather than result. I engage in experiments with an impossibility of reaching an outcome. I have a continual curiosity with infinite possibilities of the body as an unlimited resource and my research is never complete. I work with a perception of the body as a live feed of constant knowledge, undulating and fluctuating without boundaries and I want to share this through dance performance.
Supporting this artistic endeavour will enable performance of this work in theatres, at festivals and forums internationally and throughout Australia. I have become aware of the remoteness of Australia within its contemporary performing arts community and I want develop tools to nourish the perception and energise the activity of contemporary dance through encouraging rigorous cross cultural dialogue. I am curious to further explore social and cultural issues surrounding dance in Australia and to be exposed to multiple approaches addressing such issues from an international perspective. My family in Melbourne is active in housing and supporting international artists that travel to Australia and through the Deborah Hay Solo Commissioning Project I am eager to establish a viable exchange network between Australian and International artists to foster ongoing collaboration.