In Perpetuity
Ivey Wawn (NSW)
Audio file of essays available
Tactile tour and movement demonstration Sat 23 May 6:30pm
Audio described performance Sat 23 May 7:30pm
A Next Wave and Arts House co-commission
Presented by Arts House
We are the living dead. For most of our lives our meaning is stripped down to the profitability of our bodies. Just as a dressage horse is rewarded for its performance, we are rewarded with a wage. How can we strive to be anything more, when the value of our existence is reduced to its labour potential?
Choreographer Ivey Wawn asks us to find magic in the spaces between us. A gathering, an embrace, a song: In Perpetuity diagnoses the dire condition in which we find ourselves today before embarking on a radical experimental plan of action.
Alternately mournful, sensual and violent, In Perpetuity uses dance, music, scent, and language to question our relationships to capital, to history, and to each other. It is not an escape, but an exploration of where and how we might maintain something like magic in the face of the abstracting forces that will us toward this state of living death.
Content Warnings
This production contains theatrical haze effects, dynamic sound and lighting.
Audiences are also asked to be aware that there will be fragrance used throughout the performance.
In Perpetuity is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts and funding and advisory body, Chunky Move, Performance Space, Critical Path, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Lucy Guerin Inc, and the City of Melbourne through Arts House.
Choreography: Ivey Wawn in collaboration with the performers
Collaborators / Performers: Ellen Davies, Daniel Jenatsch, Megan Payne, Taree Sansbury, Ivey Wawn
Writers: Lizzie Thomson, Riki Scanlan, Ivey Wawn
Scent: Rohan Willard
Costume: Verity Mackey
Dramaturg: Lizzie Thomson
Lighting: Cliffie Rosenberg
Ivey Wawn makes dance-based work for various contexts. Her artistic work and research centre on social property relations and their historic specificities, with particular interest in relations of power, control and consent in the organisation of labour. She is committed to dance as a potential form of resistance; to social abstraction and commodification. Her works have focused on the wage relation, microbial reproductive labour, commodity fetishism, and invisibility among other things. Ivey works as a dancer, performer and collaborator contributing to the work of other artists from a range of disciplines and sells her labour as a waiter in between projects. Her work has been supported and presented by Kaldor Public Art Projects, Underbelly Arts Festival, RMIT Design Hub, Liquid Architecture, DirtyFeet, Critical Path, First Draft Gallery, Next Wave Festival and more.