Dance Massive 3-15 March 2009

Image: Tim Page

roadkill

Splintergroup

“Fuelled by a collective creativity and inventive stagecraft, it is dark, primitive and very exciting.” Daily Express

A couple are stranded in the Australian outback with a car that won't start next to a phone box that doesn't work.

This is a road trip into the agoraphobia and desolation of the Australian outback: a place of dreams and dust and ghosts. A land where backpackers disappear and tragedy strikes the vulnerable. Situated within the minds of its three performers, roadkill explores their fears and their twisted perceptions of the landscape and its dangers. roadkill is stunning, edge of your seat dance theatre: highly physical and ultimately intensely unnerving. 

Choreographed by Splintergroup, roadkill deals with these psychological states through a vocabulary of intense physicality. Using unorthodox, amazingly irregular movement and intense drama, roadkill is part road movie, part excavation into the urban legends and paranoia that surround the centre of this continent. There is genuine danger and risk in the work.

roadkill was produced by Brisbane Powerhouse and Dancenorth in association with Sasha Waltz and Guests with choreography by Splintergroup and premiered in Townsville in June 2007. Its European premiere in October 2007 was by invitation of the Barbican Centre in London. The two-week season was part of Dance Umbrella - London's annual international festival of contemporary dance and of the Barbican's 2007 Ozmosis program, which was a showcase for some of Australia's most inventive artistic talent.

Splintergroup was founded in 2004 and is a flexible and collaborative group whose membership varies. Current members for roadkill and lawn are Vincent Crowley, Sarah-Jayne Howard, Grayson Millwood and Gavin Webber, who have worked with Wim Vandekeybus (Ultima Vez), Sasha Waltz and Meryl Tankard amongst others.  All members have equal input into the creative process. In the 2007 Dance Australia Critics Survey, Splintergroup and roadkill were nominated seven times including ‘Best New Work' and ‘Highlight of the Year'.

Produced by Brisbane Powerhouse and Dancenorth, presented by Arts House and Mobile States.

www.dancenorth.com.au

Warning: Cigarette smoke, smoke effects