EPA
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  • RECENT PROJECTS
    • Climate Distraction
    • HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
    • Dancing Place - Corhanwarrabul
  • PAST PROJECTS
    • A Blind Date with Blind Creek
    • Hidden in Plain Site
    • Sensory Line
    • Force of Nature
    • A Long Walk
    • M47
    • Explosive Measures
    • Distal Fragments
    • Body of Water
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THE PROJECT

Close to Altona’s wetlands lies a strange landform of humps of earth topped with spikey plants, behind a rusting corrugated iron fence.
Formerly (1901 – 1962) a commercial explosives store, this deserted 17-hectare site has evolved as a contradictory tangle of atmospheres: a warped wilderness with a Victorian homestead; a dangerously contaminated site alive with rare, fragile native vegetation; a place breathing with Indigenous and European histories and values
EPA gave voice and feeling to the site in two nighttime performances:
Ghost voices leaking from half-open rooms; roped ‘barge’ dancers swinging in near-colliding arcs; an Indigenous elder telling stories about Bunjil and the traditional owners, the Yalukit Willum; a European woman describing the making of dynamite; lab-workers waving luminous ‘irradiated’ lights; a woman with a lamp calling to strange-named ships; a detention centre; silhouetted agaves; audience-members lying one by one in a ‘dream factory’ dugout; unearthly sounds from a metallic silver boat played with a bow; crunchy footpaths; and, the moon, shadows, old dynamite cases and the bright shining eyes of thousands of spiders…



​Audience responses
“This is the first time I have ever actually felt the presence of history in performance.”
“Lovely to see a production that sees history, in particular the history of ‘here’, as something other than a pretext for costume drama and spectacle.”
"We acknowledge that we live, work and create on the lands and waters of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. We recognise that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people are the Traditional Custodians of the lands and their continuing connection to the land and waters surrounding us. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
 We acknowledge that generations of First Nations people have danced, performed and told story here for over sixty thousand years and these rich customs and traditions continue in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture today."
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • RECENT PROJECTS
    • Climate Distraction
    • HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
    • Dancing Place - Corhanwarrabul
  • PAST PROJECTS
    • A Blind Date with Blind Creek
    • Hidden in Plain Site
    • Sensory Line
    • Force of Nature
    • A Long Walk
    • M47
    • Explosive Measures
    • Distal Fragments
    • Body of Water
  • TRAINING
  • WRITINGS
  • Contact
  • More...