IN|FORM | A Quest for Joy

THE JOY OF BEING VALUED Humans thrive when we feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. Walking through the backstage area of QPAC and into the rehearsal studios that have hosted countless national and international artists lifted our creative spirits, stimulated by the lingering energy of those who had danced before us.

THE JOY IN IMPROVISATION Improvisation is about being in the moment, responding to impulses, your own and those around you. Through improvisation we learn about ourselves and each other. ‘When you move you feel the moment, [like] no one else is around and you blank everyone else out,’ says Micah participant Sherryl.

Thanks to all participants for their trust in the process and to artists Tim Brown, Nerida Matthaei, Yenensh Nigusse and Anja Ali-Haapala. Also a special mention to En Rui Foo (QPAC), Tnee Dyer (Raw Mint Productions) and Katie McGuire (Micah Projects). The Quest was possible with financial support of Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland and Ausdance QLD; venue support from QPAC, Phluxus2 Dance Collective through the Blue Door Insider Initiative, and Queensland Theatre

Contributed by Sandi Woo, Independent Dance Artist (ADQ Seed Residency Recipient)

The Quest was a series of community based contemporary dance workshops that built on the successes of the 2017 QPAC and Royal Ballet community engagement project, We All Dance. The groups involved included participants from Access Arts, Micah Projects and The Journey Dancers. Over a number of weeks and an intensive four-day development at QPAC, participants explored personal stories and experiences inspired by George MacDonald’s 1883 children’s fantasy novel, The Princess and the Curdie. The novel’s main character, Curdie, goes on a quest for pleasure and joy, and is gifted a power to see the true authentic soul of those he touches. The essence of The Quest came from the novel and manifest in several questions: How do we acknowledge the differences in our lives? How would these differences, including dance experience, combine to represent something of our unity? What would we ultimately create? Like Curdie in MacDonald’s work, our quest for joy came from the following:

THE JOY OF DIVERSITY Having a wildly diverse range of individuals in the studio together was wonderfully chaotic. There is no single way of being, to live life, to move and no solitary approach to making performance. It’s a process that seeks our unity while respecting what makes us unique.

THE JOY OF HUMAN CONNECTION The richness of observing the moments and spaces between people when we move and create together is to experience human connection, which then folds into the dance and movement we are creating. Katie from Micah reflected, “I didn’t expect to see that level of communication and focus… [performers] reaching out for connection and being supported.”

THE JOY OF PERFORMANCE The joy of performance was in that exhilarating moment we invited an audience in to share what we had been working on and also test the performative frame in which to view the developing work, which was largely improvisational. From these lessons a question remains; what is the right performative context for this work to be viewed by an audience? The aim is for the audience to join our quest for joy and like Curdie, see the authentic souls of the performers.