Ochre Contemporary Dance Company Presents 3.3 AND BEYOND

3.3 portrays a successful Indigenous dancer, on the brink of an international career, thrown into a holding cell because of his skin colour and torn between two cultures. Ian Wilkes dances the feature role, choreographed and originally created by Indigenous dance legend Michael Leslie who performs with him in this new adaptation. Beyond, is a mesmerising and powerful new dance work performed by Floeur Alder and choreographed by State Living Treasure Chrissie Parrott.

The dancer at the heart of 3.3 is torn between excelling on the white fella's world stage or staying on his country and cultivating his community and culture. Ultimately, he just wants to dance. If he goes the blackfella way he breaks whitefella way, if he goes whitefella way he breaks blackfella law. The young man is caught in the middle. The terrible legacy of this dilemma is that the young black fella believes gaol is also a rite of passage for young men in his community. Aboriginal people represent 3.3% of the total population, yet more than 28% of Australia's prison population.

The young man communicates his anger, frustration and people's history via 100 original dance steps described by words from the Gamilaraay and Noongar languages.

Joining him in the cell is his mentor, Michael Leslie, who has deliberately got himself arrested so he can talk some sense into the young man. The older man implores the younger man to stay on the right track to succeed in the white fella world, to claim what is rightly his. The younger man has heard this dialogue before, to him nothing has changed, he and his community are still being persecuted. He questions the point of succeeding in his chosen career in a white world and wonders how things can change for the better. What have his mentor's achievements meant to the community at large?

Ochre Contemporary Dance Company is thrilled to present Michael Leslie, doyen of Indigenous Dance, in his first performance in decades. Sixty-year-old Leslie was a poor kid from Moree who fled to Sydney to become a dancer, won a Churchill Fellowship, spent seven years in New York with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, choreographed Bran Nue Dae and established the Michael Leslie Foundation to mentor indigenous youth across rural WA.

This work is the first to feature his Aboriginal Dance Method, developed as a Masters Thesis, a fusion of African American and contemporary dance, ballet and physical theatre.

Leslie performs alongside Ian Wilkes, master of Noongar Dance. Indigenous musician David Milroy composes under the direction of Mark Howett, who is also designer for the production. The work is invited to the Berlin Be-Bop Festival in 2019.

3.3 is a work of Dance Theatre, exploring contemporary and traditional dance, text, language, music and comedy. It is an explosive contemplation of culture and survival... and why has jail become a rite of passage for so many young indigenous kids.

Beyond is the result of original Ochre Contemporary Dance member Floeur Alder commissioning Award-winning Choreographer Chrissie Parrott to make a solo work. It is 30-minute transformative solo that takes dancer and audience on a transformative journey. A poetic and surreal work that asks the performer to uncover the 'pure' form that often lies dormant in classical or contemporary dance - to go beyond the conventional.

The double-Bill Dance performance will be accompanied by a screening of Daning, a ten-minute film made by Mark Howett during Ochre's residency in late 2017 with the Daksha Sheth Dance Company, based outside Trivandrum in Kerala India. The work is a reaction to the dance development and content discovered during the project. In Sand the performers transform into powerful dancer/deities who struggle with their godly powers and ancient wisdoms, trying to help make sense of our modern world.

Ochre Contemporary Dance Company's Artistic Director Mark Howett said, "I am thrilled to present an evening of dynamic dance with two of Australia's choreographic legends, Michael Leslie and Chrissie Parrott. I have worked with them both for more than 30 years and this season is the first time we will be presenting work together."

Tickets: ptt.wa.gov.au
More information: ochredance.org

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