BODY BODY COMMODITY
A subversive commentary on the impacts of capitalist society and consumerist behaviours on the female body.
Six female performers animate the space, ‘exploiting and embracing their habitat,’ blurring the lines between object, body, power, and product.
BURNIE ARTS CENTRE
PATAWAY/
BURNIE
10 SEPTEMBER 2024
THEATRE ROYAL NIPALUNA/
HOBART
13-14 SEPTEMBER 2024
"I hope that audiences experience something new, entertaining,
and challenging. BODY BODY COMMODITY walks a sharp serrated line between humorous and harrowing, inviting you to
connect with the confronting realities that women experience
regarding body image, voyeurism, and objectivity. Issues that still require
our attention and bravery to overhaul." - Jenni Large
CREATIVE TEAM
JENNI LARGE
Jenni is based in Lutruwita/Tasmania and works as a dancer, teacher and award-winning choreographer across so-called Australia. Driven by the personal, political and transformative forces of embodiment, Jenni’s dancing practice incorporates objects and apparatus, endeavouring to meld experimental with entertaining. Conceptually, her body of work seeks to subvert relational narratives and analyse socio-political themes that impact women. Jenni has performed extensively throughout Australia and internationally with artists and companies, including Tasdance, Dancenorth, Legs On The Wall, GUTS Dance, SA Opera/Leigh Warren and Ashleigh Musk. She has presented her choreographic work at festivals and venues, including Mona Foma, Ten Days On The Island, Ohm Festival Brisbane Powerhouse, Dancehouse and Carriage Works, both as an independent artist and through commissions from Sydney Dance Company, Australasian Dance Collective and the Keir Choreographic Award. Last year, Jenni was honoured to receive a Chloe Munro Fellowship and participate in Asia Link’s Singapore Arts Now exchange as a creative associate with Tasdance.
Image by Pedro Greig
ASHLEIGH MUSK
Ashleigh Musk (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, dramaturg and community arts facilitator based in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in so-called Australia. She is deeply captivated by imagining futures, with a sensitivity to landscape and relationships, both human and beyond. Ashleigh's work often uses industrial materials which are activated in experimental ways, revealing complex relationships through handling of these junk-like objects with radical care and tenderness.
Significant projects in 2024 include: developing ‘Chaos in Concert’ with Jenni Large and Anna Whitaker, touring ‘SUB’ and ‘Fertile Ground’ to national platforms across so-called Australia, being artist-in-residence at tMuseum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, collaborating on ‘Desert Hothouse’ and youth project ‘Alice Can Dance’ with GUTS Dance, creating multidisciplinary installation CRISÁLIDA with Ivan Trigo Miras for the Desert Festival (Mparntwe) and participating as a selected artist in ‘Conversations on Performance’ at Festival TransAmériques and at the International Choreographers Retreat with Montreal Danse (Canada).
https://ashleighmusk.art/About
Image by Ivan Trigo Miras
GEORGIA RUDD
Georgia Rudd is an independent contemporary dancer, performer and teacher originating from New Zealand. She is now living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Prior to this she worked with various artists during six years with Dancenorth Australia under the directorship of Kyle Page and Amber Haines including; Melanie Lane, Lucy Guerin, Stephanie Lake, Alisdair Macindoe, Gideon Obarzanek, Lee Searle, Jo Lloyd and Ross McCormack, performing and touring works at festivals nationally and internationally. She has choreographed three short works, ‘sifting through all the forgets', 'Construction and Contemplation' and 'Together Indecision' for Dancenorth’s annual Tomorrow Maker’s seasons. Currently Georgia continues to refine her practice where the body is the basis for questioning, processing and transformation. Her embodiment practices honour the complexity and intelligence of the body and its ability to reflect the world in which it is in.
AMBER McCARTNEY
Amber McCartney is a dancer and choreographer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice incorporates prosthetics, mask-making, film, and practical special effects to create new augmented bodies. Amber has worked extensively with Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc. and is a creative associate of Tasdance. She has collaborated with independent artists such as Jo Lloyd, Jenni Large, Prue Lang, James Batchelor, Antony Hamilton Projects, and Stephanie Lake.
Amber received the John Truscott Artists Award for her solo Tiny Infinite Deaths, performed in RISING 2023, originally commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc. and The Substation. In 2023, Amber premiered her solo Baby Girl, commissioned by Tasdance, for MONA FOMA.
In 2022, she was honoured to receive a Chloe Munro Fellowship from Lucy Guerin Inc. She won a Green Room Award for Best Performer in Prue Lang’s Project F and was a finalist for the Telstra Emerging Choreographer Award. Her film Tiny Passenger was screened in dance(lens), Dancehouse. In 2020, Amber was a recipient of Chunky Move’s Solitude 1 and created her film Softtrap for the 2021 Activators program.
ERIN O’ROURKE
Erin O’Rourke is a Naarm/Melbourne-based contemporary dance practitioner and researcher. She spent 2021 undertaking Honours Research at the Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne) finishing with First Class Honours. Erin’s recent research focused on the multiplicity of the dancer as they dismantle and challenge their moving identity in working with numerous artists. She is invested in giving the dancer a voice, privileging the dancer’s value in and of itself. Beyond research, Erin has connected and worked with artists in Melbourne, including Jenni Large, Harrison Hall, and Fort Heart Co, as well as extending into choreographic realms through residencies at Lucy Guerin Inc and Dancehouse as part of the Emerging Choreographers Program. Previous to 2021, Erin engaged widely with the independent scene in Brisbane & surrounds, working on numerous projects with artists including Claire Marshall, Liesel Zink, Ashleigh Musk, Prying Eye Productions and Supercell: Festival of Contemporary Dance, after graduating from QUT with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance in 2019.
DANNI COOK
Danni Cook is a freelance contemporary dancer of European, Mā’ohi and Māori descent, hailing from Norfolk Island, Hitiaurevareva (Pitcairn Island) and Ngāpuhi land on the North Island of Aotearoa. She was raised in so-called Australia on the lands of the Yuin and Dharawal people. Danni trained at the Western Australia Academy of the Performing Arts and studied abroad at the Purchase Conservatory of Dance in New York.
Since graduating in 2023, Danni has engaged in professional relationships with various artists and companies, including Legs on the Wall, Tasdance, Jenni Large, Carol Brown, Austi Dance and Physical Theatre, and Daisy Sanders. With support from Lucy Guerin Inc. Moving Forward Residency and Australian Dance Theatre’s Tanja Liedtke studio residency, she has been co-developing a new work, ‘Together'. Danni’s practice is focused on the energetic exchange between self, her collaborators, and the land and waters she exists on and travels between. She is interested in using movement as a vessel to interrogate how the form of our body is a manifestation of the land, delving into and listening to place and the voices of our spirits and ancestors.
ANNA WHITAKER
Anna Whitaker is a multi award-winning Queensland based sound designer and composer with a palate for experimental, acousmatic works and surround sound composition. She graduated from Queensland Conservatorium of Music with a Bachelor of Music Technology, and since has designed and composed for productions including MONA FOMA, Bleach* Festival, The Farm, tasdance, Stompin', La Boite Theatre Company, Brisbane Festival, HOTA Gold Coast, Festival 2018, Vulcana Circus and Playlab. Her vast background in classical music and technology-based sound art result in musical concoctions from the traditional and contemporary worlds. Anna received the 2020/2021 and 2019 Matilda Award for Best Sound Design for her work on Michael Smith’s ‘Cowboy’ and The Farm’s ‘Throttle’ respectively. Anna's unique voice is also evident in her installation works which have exhibited at Bleach* Festival, HOTA, MetroArts and QPAC Museum.
MICHELLE BOYDE - COSTUME & SET DESIGNER
Michelle Boyde is a freelance designer and creative director living and working in Tasmania, newly appointed the Artistic Director of Design Tasmania. Having spent her early career as a professional contemporary dancer, in 2012, Michelle retrained in design, gaining a Bachelor of Fashion (Design) (Honours) from RMIT under the School of Architecture and Design in Melbourne. Specialising in contour wear (stretchwear, knit fabrics, intimate apparel and swimwear), Michelle found a natural home back in the arts industry as a costume designer/maker, working with Melbourne’s premiere contemporary dance company, Chunky Move Dance Melbourne, alongside a host of independent dancers and choreographers. Living in Tasmania since 2014, Michelle regularly designs for the State’s cultural institutions such as Mona, Dark Mofo, Mona Foma, Unconformity and Terrapin Puppet Theatre, and is the lead designer for co-founded art group Unconscious Collective, responsible for several large-scale installations across Tasmania and Melbourne. As a design mentor, she has worked with Stompin’ Dance Co. on All Expenses Paid Mona Foma 2021, Second Echo Ensemble (Beauty Project 2021-22), and with Tasmanian aboriginal designer and artist Michelle Maynard. With Michelle, she is currently delivering a 12-month pilot fashion design teaching program for Tasmanian aboriginal artists and designers, the outcomes of which will be an exhibition at Design Tasmania in 2022 and national runway events in 2023.
Image by Gabriel Comerford + Jenni large