Dance Massive 2009 - News & Reviews

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Splintered vision: lawn, roadkill and the Australian mindscape

3 March 2009

Splintergroup is an evolving group of creator/directors whose philosophy is to give over personal investment in favour of a completely collaborative relationship. For lawn the core group of choreographer/performers are Vincent Crowley, Grayson Millwood and Gavin Webber; for roadkill the group comprises Sarah-Jayne Howard, Millwood and Webber. According to Webber - also Artistic Director of Townsville's Dancenorth - another key tenet is that change is essential to the life of the work. "Once we have stopped changing things," says Webber, "it is time to stop performing the work."

Sticky, cheesy, breezy: The Fondue Set’s No Success Like Failure

2 March 2009

The publicity blurb calls it "part talent quest, part educational forum and part cabaret". Reviews have described it as "a swirling, glittering, stupefying soup of reference and creation" and "a ludicrous theatrical world that somehow despite its many absurdities makes perfect sense". From what I can gather, No Success Like Failure will involve a blue tinsel curtain, a rabbit suit, plywood palm trees, a chat about ‘the moment before something happens', sobbing in unison, syncopated breathing, French theorists, ‘sad dancing' and a gold jumpsuit. Apparently NSLF grew out of an earlier work The Set (Up), has previously been seen at the Sydney Opera House Studio, Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW), and at North Melbourne Town Hall in 2008, and is the result of a collaboration with UK choreographer/director Wendy Houston (Houston's Desert Island Dances and Happy Hour were both seen at last year's Melbourne International Arts Festival). Of their interest in ‘failure', the Sydney-based group says: "Well, there's No Success Like Failure and there's No Business Like Show Business".