Past Residents Natalie Abbott
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Natalie Abbott's (re)PURPOSE: the MVMNT - Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse
Natalie Abbott is an Australian performance maker, choreographer and experimental artist busy with excavating the fissures between what is real and un-real, and pushing into the spectacle of theatre to create absurd performance experiences for audiences. We are in a post internet, post human, post truth, post post world constantly grappling with the soft edges of reality. It’s not real, …but it’s not, not real…Natalie works closely with a team of collaborators in light, design and sound to drive her artistic and choreographic vision and deepen her understanding of performance, the body as a political entity and movement practices. Her current practice interrogates failure, flying and falling as actions and philosophical questions.
Whilst at HIAP I am taking a “soft-edged” approach to research and performance practice. I am interested in finding new ways of creating group choreography in different times, places, spaces and using that as a model for touring work that engages actively with the politics of the group of people present at the moment in time. I will work with local dancers and artists to generate material that will be presented at the culmination of the residency. I will host a series of events; softly-curated performance evenings where local artists can come together and share their practice, a performance, a reading, anything they like as a way of cultivating community and exposing practice as process. I will read a lot and contextualise my practice outside of my usual working network. I will watch the snow fall and melt, and fall and melt… —Natalie