Expiration 2022 occurs in three acts: The Cave, The Edge and The Inn. It has been performed first as a solo at the MCA, then as a duet with Niki Verrall at AGNSW. Using memory, we excavate our way through different zones of a gallery space. Sometimes we cross thresholds; between internal and external, near and distant, social worlds and internal ones. Speaking is performed as part of the process, often as a welcome to a visitor, or as a generative force into the act of dancing again. We invite wind into the gallery, passing through the threshold of the mouth from external to internal to external again through a audible channelling of the lips in a whistle. The work is responsive to the world around it as a kind of metabolising entity; taking in the visual field, ingesting it into the body and pushing it out again through movement. Expiration 2022 takes all of the room and the people in it as material to be processed through the act of dancing, and works very explicitly with the liveness of what it is to be present, seen and unseen.
Expiration 2022 was first performed as a solo in the context of Primavera public programming at the MCA in Sydney. It was later developed for MONUMENTAL (working title) at the Art Gallery of NSW in April 2022. MONUMENTAL (working title) was then re-performed in January 2023 as part of Sydney Festival, and with it Expiration 2022.
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