PARTNERS
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City of Melbourne
Queen Victoria Market Boon Wurrung Foundation Melbourne Star ARTISTS/PRESENTERS
12/11/2016 - 12/12/2016
BACKGROUNDM47 was the result of a proposal from the EPA to the City of Melbourne Arts Grants program for a month of events to celebrate the city. It was a large curated festival entailing 47 site-specific performance events over 30 days and nights, throughout the council area. The EPA was originally formed with the specific intent of using performance to understand the city: its geography, its architecture, its famous weathers, its history, its people, and to show it to itself.
THE PLACE
Melbourne (Naarm) is situated on the lands of the Kulin nation, across Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung country. European colonists first arrived from Launceston in 1835. Victorian school children are taught that John Batman sailed up the River Yarra and declared, "this will be the place for a village". There are various reports from Indigenous and other sources of attempts to make a treaty and betrayals by the colonisers. It is now accepted that the land was never ceded and a binding treaty never signed.
The distinctive Hoddle grid which frames the Melbourne CBD, with its wide streets and network of adjoining lanes was surveyed in 1838. By 1847, the city of 23,000 people was declared a cathedral city by decree of Queen Victoria.. This little-known foundation date gave the theme to the project and the decision to stage 47 performances across a month. Gold was discovered to the north of the city in 1851 and the population boomed. By the 1880s "marvellous Melbourne" was a wealthy vibrant city, a centre of the wool trade and the gold rush, and home to a distinctive colonial architecture, featuring the local basalt stone. By the 1960s, Melbourne was a conservative, provincial city of 2 million people, The CBD, Hoddle's grid was a ghost town from 6 pm to dawn on weekdays, and from midday Saturday on weekends During the 1980s, state and city governments began planning programs which are still being renewed and actioned today. The aim was to revitalise the city centre, to make it a cultural centre, and a place for people to live rather than just to work and shop. Melbourne is famous for its "four seasons in a day" weather. It is a temperate climate, characterised by cold winds from the Antarctic south, Bass Strait storms, and hot, dry blasts from the Central Deserts. Performances were staged in a variety of locations including:
THE PROCESSEPA members spent three months surveying sites around the city, training in locations, discussing performative possibilities, discovering hidden corners and new possibilities in everyday places and well-known sites at different times of the day and night. After places for performance were selected, performers researched sites using a multiplicity of different modes and methods including: sustained inhabitations, Bodyweather analyses, cultural and archival research, engagement with local people, gathering stories, and community forums. The aim was to understand how the experience of place is generated, to evoke and arouse sensations, associations, atmospheres and an awareness of their Indigenous and non-Indigenous values.
A number of sites and performances were dropped along the way due to permission and access problems. The program gradually took shape and evolved further during the month of performances. |
THE PERFORMANCES
- 47 site-specific performances over 30 days and nights
- Activated Iocations scattered through the City
- Many events with audience participation
- 30 artists: EPA and guest artists
- Workshops in ecological performance
- Pop-up performance HUB
- Nature dance film made by members of public
- M47 marked the declaration of Melbourne as a City in 1847
- Dirge March through Swanston St
Events included:
Dancing with Victoria Market shopping trolleys, trailing bones through the CBD, a mystery night time bike ride to a riverside forest performance, a WEAVE comedy, durational performance in a library, a survey of waste at the performance sites, butoh on the Birrarung, and dancing along defunct watercourses among lunchtime crowds. Audiences joined in a sensory walk, a humorous toilet tour with a serious peek into gender history, a blindfold walk in Royal Park grasslands, contemplative conversation in Melbourne Cemetery; a Fitzroy Gardens ‘sound bath’, a fake real estate auction auction and military raid on a miniature village, an Indigenous dance workshop and performance for children.
Photos: Alice Hutchison
Nature Dancing - Film |