Beyond Shore
Concept & Direction Josie Daw
Choreography Josie Daw and Dancers
Performers Sally Grage-Moore, Cobie Orger and Amelia McQueen
Projections Josie Daw and Cobie Orger
Lighting Kimberly Kwa
Sound Luke Paulding
Costumes Josie Daw
Voice Milijana Cancar
Understudy Zoe Scoglio
Principal Supervisor Dr Elizabeth Dempster
Project Supervisor Jude Walton
Choreographic notes
Beyond Shore is the presentation of my PhD research. It explores the repercussions of moving
dance making activities away from the studio and asks how choreographic practice might be challenged or transformed when it is pursued ‘on location’, to allow for other understandings of site and location to infiltrate the choreography.
Over a period of three years, I have made a collection of ten, short dance archives, all built from real and imagined geographies of Williamstown. The final rendering of the work has been to move
it to Seaworks – into a space once used as machinery shed for boat and shipbuilding. Watching the
dancers physically negotiate this industrial room, with its harsh floor and fine dirt, extended what I felt was central to many of the archives - how place is ‘met’ through the body.
Josie Daw Sound notes
In first walking through Williamstown and into this disused boat shed, I was fascinated with the sounds of this seaside community: the perennial dialogue of people, birds and ships. When asked to construct an entirely electronic score, I felt inspired to reconstruct these sounds and images, yet still approaching the electronic sounds idiomatically and allowing transitions into more abstract territories. I attempted to use this reconstructed, stylised approach to create sounds and music that would enhance the concepts inherent in the choreography.
Luke Paulding
Seaworks
Nelson Place, Williamstown
4-7 December, 2008
Appendix 2: Parkour Activity
See Archive Seven pp 101 - 105
Parkour Activity
(Some imagined, some experienced)Route from Point Gellibrand to Surf Lifesaving Club
Running along footpath
Hurdle over Pt Gellibrand low post and chain fence
Three at a time steps across footbridge. Jump off before final five steps by one handed vault over side rail.
Running balance along side of kerb.
Jump off low wall into soft sand at Williamstown beach.
Duck under metal hand rail (elbow height).
Weaving in between pine trees near Williamstown Botanical Gardens (from South West corner to Gate of Gardens).
Scrabbling up slide at children’s playground (now defunct).
Appendix 3: Dancers’ Voices
See Archive Three pp 78-85
Voice One
79Five things: The sound of water The bald apple Return to reality
Boat Club – what’s locked up inside? Mystery
Scott loves Sally Scott – convict
Sally – pendant lady: she discovers Scott in boat house Boat locked up
He escaped and hid out in boat club
Sally – comes to boat house to feed pigeons and escape from family. One day she enters only to realise another presence has entered the space. She creeps around slowly quietly, slightly nervous. Looks through windows. Around corners. Underneath decrepit table. Eventually she climbs up to shored boat on stands in abandoned club and peers inside.
She sees blood on the hull and meters away from blood she notices the body of a sleeping man.
His wrists are bloody. He’s filthy.
Black toenails.
Resting on one arm, he breathes loudly. Body is quite contorted but he looks peaceful.
79 To keep in the spirit of the rough written notes of the dancers, I have deliberately kept the grammar within these documents unpolished unless it interferes with the reader’s clarity.
She leaves him some bread - scraps that she was to feed the birds. She covers him with a tarp lying nearby
She leaves quietly.
Everyday for five days she returns to repeat this ritual, on the sixth day the man is not there. She looks around for him but he is nowhere to be found. A little disappointed she sits down in the boat and begins to think about who this man is and what his story might be.
She begins to invent stories about his history and character. How he was brought up by his older brother, who was uneducated and violent. But being a big brother he was idolised and respected.
They were nomadic, frequently sleeping under the stars, in docked boats, on the shore, under people’s front verandahs.
She imagines that they used to play games. Physical games that involved lots of jumping and climbing (that is why he was so strong looking). She imagines that they use to steal food from local bakeries by sneaking in the back while the baker was wiping his hands clean from all the dough. Although their life was tough they were carefree and bound by no one or nothing. One day the younger brother wakes up from a restless night of sleep to see his brother in the corner rocking back and forth, muttering, gibbering incessantly. He goes to touch his shoulder but his brother launches out at him, slapping his hand away and sending him flying to the ground. His head knocks the ground and sends him unconscious. When he comes to he finds his hands and feet bound and hanging from a tree.80
She gets obsessed with inventing these stories so after a time she begins to believe that they’re actually real.
She commits suicide.
Strips naked, hangs her choker on foliage, walks into the water and drowns herself.
Voice Two
Why isn’t this young man at school? Can you learn something important from fishing? Why do I assume it is only good to learn things which are important? In the past fishing was important.
My sneaker is the most false thing here.
Wood, steel, hunting – and within these surrounds my Bejing ‘Sonverse’. White shoes like some lady’s fancy.
Williamstown Look right Look left Look down Temporary
Sticks on the ground
ba ba ba ba ba ba
ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
- that’s my feet on the ground-
empty
overgrown
bus stop
tyre ‘ doughie’ marks on road
vs
father and son doing the gardening the coolest cricket pitch in the world
singular people in the landscape person scaring seagulls
swimming laps in ocean
old man watching road then retreating
I was a solitary figure and I meant it that way. Every other solo walker in the world wishes they were as untouchable as me. The old man staring at the road then retreating back the way he came, he wishes he was as stoic as I am. You can’t touch this.
I was going exploring. I knew through the fence there were more boats ‘cause I could see them from the furthest edge of the pier. There were no people there now, so I wanted to get in. I found a side path and moved along the brick wall until it came close to the wire fence. I used my back on the bricks and my feet on the fence to push and slide my way higher, higher and higher. My calves started to hurt, my back was burning, adrenalin was shaking me. Suddenly I was blinded, intense glare in my eyes and my fear spiked madly, my muscles jerked to still.
Below me on the other side of the fence was a very small man. Next to him, moving
excitedly, eyes fixed on me was a huge dog. He was only slightly shorter than the man. I had no time to become confused, the image said danger and I saw the man holding a small mirror. I let my legs go soft, causing my body to fall towards the ground. Landing was painful but I could still run. Run and run and run.
Voice Three
Answering text messages from B about moving her stuff in and my stuff out… Gardener raking across the lawn behind where I am sitting.
Who is the woman in the photo?
Whose earring do I have in my envelope?
Are the earring, story and woman in the photo connected somehow?
Two young women, friends, walk past me through the gardens. Actually they were heading towards me (where I am sitting on the bench), but are now deviating to take the path further away from me, and now heading towards the gate behind me. I hear snatches of voices but can’t hear words, or what they are talking about.
A wattlebird is busy on a tree directly in front of me – looking for flowers, now it’s flown to the next tree, a small bush. Another wattle bird is directly above me in the tree which is hanging over the bench I am sitting on. The two birds fly to meet up on another tree… Plane flies overhead. Not visible, heavy cloud. Train blasts a whistle. Train passing through crossing – I can hear the clanging bells.
Another aeroplane passes overhead.
Two lovers sit on a park bench….meeting for lunch in the rotunda on the beach.
Two young boys, brothers, one older than the other walking through the gardens. They are calling to a pet lovebird – bright green with a pink head, which is walking behind them on the path…
Waves, wind, sand, rocks as I eat my lunch…
Pine cones scatter far and wide across the grass beneath the pine trees keep the gardener busy. It is quiet amidst the trees and few people pass by during the day. Occasionally, fine gentry folk stroll by, skirts swishing, bonnets bobbing, canes tapping, top hats tipped to the gardener who bows ever so slightly as they pass. Sometimes rowdy, unruly children scamper after them, kept in tow by frustrated governesses. But long period of time go by which pass in relative silence – just the trees, flowers and occasional wildlife for company. Wattlebirds that fly into the garden in pairs, tripping from tree to tree looking for nectar. Sometimes big flocks of starlings fly overheard circling, darting, keeping formations moving as if like one single organism instead of a flock of sixty small birds. Their antics capture the attention of the gardener as he works, sometimes keeping him awe-inspired for minutes at a time with their playful antics, only to disappear suddenly and be gone.
Once, a rustling in the bushes suggested something more than an animal. A crumpled, scraggy form extracted itself from the undergrowth and stumbled away across the garden in the dim light that was falling with the dusk. A woman, young, unkempt, hair long and wild, rags for clothing fled to more cover on the edge of the garden amidst the large oaks and the shadows underneath.
Startled and curious, the gardener edged closer to the bushes from where she had emerged, searching the undergrowth, a mixture of excitement, and fear…
He found a blue glass drop earring amongst the leaves.
Kids riding their bikes in the distance outside the surf club. Sitting on the verandah of the club once I get closer, playing a complicated game. Kids inhabit a lot of these places/spaces. Animal tracks on sand as I walk along the beach. Soft, round , doggy paw prints others with sharper, claw like toes, birdy three-pronged prints which go in crazy curved lines.
Houses prickling up along the esplanade, following the curve of the beach. What is happening in there?
Someone is standing on the breakwater, they stay there for a long time. As I get closer I realise it is a fisherman.