Eliza

Eliza is a contemporary dance/theatre work that combines the elements of digital imagery, puppetry, and contemporary choreography, with an evocative original 'live' sound score .

The performance focuses on the character of an ordinary woman, and takes key stages of her journey as metaphors for a contemporary exploration of survival. What are we prepared to do in order to survive? When is the unforgivable potentially the forgivable? This is contemporary dance theatre expressed through revelation of character. A character that is complex, ambiguous, contradictory and ultimately essentially human.

Our narrative reflects upon themes of isolation and dislocation, asking what is our connection, our fear of the unknown and unknowable that arguably is the Australian experience of landscape. Each environment becomes another set of challenges and obstacles to survival.

Some say the Australian landscape can never be innocent, that it is a natural environment that is inhospitable to freedom. In deliberately referencing the tradition of Australian gothic horror films, the landscape is cast as a potentially malevolent and hostile character. The dominant sense is of the unknown and the unknowable, and the hidden, a landscape full of fearful secrets and unheard voices. The work is deliberately structured as a mystery, where we the audience are led to ask ourselves, what crime has she committed? What has she done?

Inspired by the stories and subsequent mythologies of real life figures such as the mysterious Eliza Fraser (who disappeared and later re-appeared,the sole survivor of a tragic shipwreck and the subsequent murder of her husband with the rest of the crew in far North Queensland) through to the enigmatic Lindy Chamberlain (whose newborn was taken by a dingo in central Australia). Their stance appears one of guilt by omission, where their silences speak as loudly as their actual voices. As with films such as the eerie classic Picnic at Hanging Rock (again loosely based on a real story), the landscape ultimately silences all, where we will never know what really happened, other than that something did happen out there?

Eliza represents Steamworks continuing creation of original, accessible works that investigate and incorporate interplay of forms, styles and genres, and an ongoing exploration and interest in telling uniquely Australian stories in a contemporary context.

Direction/concept: Sally Richardson
Production Design: Zoe Atkinson
Choreographers: Chrissie Parrott, Danielle Micich, Paea Leach
Puppetry: Philip Mitchell
Sound Design: Kingsley Reeve
Vision Design: Ashley de Prazer
Performers Shona Erskine and Jacob Lehrer

Producers Performing Lines WA

Creative Development One: Perth, June/July 2009
Excerpt Performence: Standing Bird: Choreographed and performed by Paea Leach, SHORTCUTS(Strut) October 1 -4, 2009

Video from creative development June/July 2009



ELIZA: a short dance film created with dash visual - Ashley de Prazer (2008) Performer: Shona Erskine