Looking at the body as the ultimate archive, Dance Rites probes at the idea of what it means to prove cultural authenticity through the lens of a dance floor or performative space. What is learned and what is embodied, what is permitted and the social inscriptions on the black and brown female body. Combining historical, ‘traditional’, pedestrian and iconic representations of popular forms of dance and sport through repetitive movement and gesture.

Dance Rites looks at the black and brown female body as archive that re-places and diverts notions of archive away from a documental deposit or bureaucratic agency dedicated to the (mis)management of the past. In these documented moments it is never static, and it is always innovative because it has had to be.

Devika’s video work is an exercise in temporal weaving, relational gestures and ephemeral elongation from site-responsive choreographies recorded within a static frame. Practiced at Koonya Beach on Boon Wurrung Country, this work emphasises the inextricable interconnectedness of earth and body whilst inciting complexities of territory, migration, and identification through inverted forms.

Waves Are Disturbances is a research project that considers consent in romantic relationships through the movement of ocean waves by dancing. 'A breaking wave' refers to its movement. Usually, waves like the squiggly lines of radio waves, are a continual movement. Nearing the shore, the distance between the ocean surface and the seafloor grows closer together. This creates too much momentum, giving the wave no option but to emerge above the water’s surface. And literally, break. This seems like an appropriate way of describing feelings. As if something submerged, going on for a long time in perpetual movement, rears its ugly head at breaking point.

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Zoë Bastin (lead artist & choreographer)

Philipa Rothfield (dramaturg)

Beth Raywood Cross (producer)

Grace Ferguson (composer)

Hayley Does (dancer)

Louis Roach (director)

Siobhan Byrne (costume designer)

Jordan Kaye (videographer)