Category: Dance

Double Bind

 

I knew Stephanie and her family when she was a child, and have been keenly following her career as a choreographer. I will be interviewing her some time in 2016 and am so looking forward to catching up with her.

Stephanie recently let me and her friends, fans and colleagues know about ‘Double Bind,’ and I wanted to let my blog readers know and encourage those who love dance, supporting new companies, and innovation to pledge for her work.

“The Stephanie Lake Company is a new Melbourne based contemporary dance company who began working on Double Blind in 2014 and are thrilled that it will premiere at Sydney Festival in 2016. Excitingly, Double Blind will be the first work under the Stephanie Lake Company banner.”

“Double Blind interrogates the perils of obedience with electricity, intricacy and grace. What if internal conflict was made external? Inspired in part by real-world experiments in the conflict between personal ethics and our obedience to those in a position of authority, Double Blind sees the performers twist and vibrate, and ultimately bend and break under authority.”

“Stephanie Lake is an award winning choreographer and dancer. Her recent works including DUAL, A Small Prometheus, Aorta and Mix Tape have been presented by Melbourne Festival, Sydney Opera House, Theatre National de Chaillot (Paris), Theater im Pfalzbau (Germany), Dance Massive, Dublin Dance Festival, Tramway (Glasgow) and Aarhus Festival (Denmark) among others. Stephanie has been awarded the Helpmann Award (2014), Australian Dance Award (2014) and Green Room Award (2011) for Best Choreography.”

“In 2013 she was appointed Resident Director of Lucy Guerin Inc, which included working as Guerin’s rehearsal director at Lyon Opera Ballet. She received a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in the same year as well as the Dame Peggy Van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship in 2012.”

 Throw your support behind this production and read more about it on Pozible  – 4 days to go to contribute.

More information can be found here Stephanie Lake

The above content is from the pozible site.

A Mentor’s Journey

 

When you mentor you are working towards giving someone independence to achieve his or her own dream.

You are not doing for, but inspiring someone to action.

I made the short film above, inspired by Danielle’s dream for a dance drama where she danced both parts.

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She wanted to make a film called Shadow Boxer.

I just wanted to show her how far I thought we could go with the footage we had.

She inspired and challenged me by asking me to do things I had never done with film before.

‘Can we do this June?’ she asked.

She knew I was still learning too but she had faith in my ability to learn and adapt.

I learnt what I could about the editing program I had and then taught her what her could, fully expecting her to take it a step further because this was her dream and her vision.

I created layers of film that she could mix and remix.

We worked in the time frames we had, but I knew she could do a lot of the editing herself as she had some film experience.  So we invested that time in finding the parts of the program she would need to master to achieve her goals.

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I wanted her to know she could finish her project by herself.  She worked and worked on the film after the time I had with her came to an end.  Then one day she sent me the link – she was happy with it!

After many months I decided to revisit the original mentoring film and have since added more elements, like falling leaves and a closing sequence to round the music out. The subtle animation seems to work well with the piano.

I didn’t like the original colour, so I warmed it up.  So you see the mentor learns from the student and the student the mentor.  It is best when it’s a two way street.

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Have you ever been a mentor?  What was easy and what was a challenge for you?

Mentoring Reference

 

 

Dancing Moon, Fire, Ocean

To see what I have been up to whilst away from social and media and the internet visit this film.   Dancing Moon, Fire, Ocean.

I’ve been learning to apply collage techniques to film, just like the photographs I love to do.

This video features a couple.

Keep well and may you find the power of dance in your life.

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Power of Dance – June Perkins

Dance and Dream – take a magic carpet ride

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Dance Class – By June Perkins

Recently I went on assignment to practice photographing children moving and grooving in their dance class.

I was invited by the ever creative Danielle to take photos of her energetic Wednesday group.

The great thing about this assignment was having the freedom to experiment with my camera settings without the pressure of a set brief.

The hour went so quickly and I had so much creative fun.  It reminded me of when my own kids were little and I thought about what photographs I would have liked to remember their creative classes.

I went looking for magical moments.  Some are featured in the collage at the top of the post.

Jumping, hugs with friends,  delicate movement, jumping and concentrating.

I loved it when all the mothers made a magical tent for the children to reach after being on a magical carpet.

Magical Carpet Ride – June Perkins

I was attracted to the close moments between caring mothers and their children and have quite a few photographs of that in my final set.

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Mother and Daughter in Flow – June Perkins

As I organised the photographs I found some children had a sequence of photographs that told their individual story of dance class.

I put a few of these together in collages and thought about how one could follow just one child in his or her journey through a dance class and tell a story that way. Another assignment one day.

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Dancing Story – June Perkins

Thanks so much to Danielle, her students and their mothers for letting me capture your special world. Will share a few more on the blog, and forward them to your class.