Overture

Milk Bar Mag recently spoke with contemporary dance choreographer Jo Lloyd about her new dance piece, Overture, playing at Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall this week.

Find out what she had to say about it:

MBM: What inspired you to create Overture?

JL:The idea for this work came to me because I’m fascinated by a popular overture written by Felix Mendelssohn, which he wrote in 1826 at age 17. I really wanted to work with this piece of music.

I knew the piece well because I had danced to it back when I was at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School, so it brought back good memories.

I felt very connected to the music and was very overwhelmed the detail of the music so I wanted to steer the choreography into a more intricate way of working. When I was developing the choreography, I worked with the memory of the music rather than the music itself.

I then found out about Felix and his strange and complicated relationship with his sister Fanny.

It seemed like they were very collaborative and that she contributed to his work but she wasn’t able to publish or play her music because she was told her place was in the home. This brought up a history of females not being able to to their art.

MBM:Tell us a little bit about Overture and what the show is about?

JL: The piece isn’t about Felix and Fanny but I’ve used this element as a mechanism for the performers to navigate how these things correlate for us.

I wanted what we do physically to be as highly detailed as the music, but I don’t know if that could be possible so it became more about trying. Trying to connect to the music, trying to connect with someone you didn’t meet.

It’s about conversations that weren’t had, or conversations that were redundant. Who would you want to meet if you could? And what would you say to them if you did meet them.

It’s this concept of what you didn’t say, or what you did say but how you remember it and how a lot of things stick in your mind, even when that person is gone.

I wanted to make it about not just who I would like to meet but for the other dancers who they relate to or would like to meet. And if you could have the conversation, what would you say? I was interested in the effort of making conversation, or the effort of doing something. Why wait until it’s too far gone? Why not create something now while you can?

It’s also this idea of being seen and heard rather than being hidden (like Fanny Mendelssohn).

Women in history who were too vocal were often seen as being insane, women these days don’t play brass instruments as much as men and there are not as many renowned female composers. We’re still having the  same conversation now in performing with regards to women in the arts.

MBM: How do you want the audience to feel when they come to see the show?

JL:I like the idea that I’m working with the body and dance. A lot of this show involves set objects and ways of representing these ideas but I like that that body does the most in terms of giving away the show’s concepts.

It’s this sense that you’re watching the thinking or little clues from the dancers. The frequency or reverberation of what we do and our behaviour with one another. We can imagine scenarios and shared fictions but really it’s the four of us in the space with the audience so the conversation becomes about that; the audience and the performer, the performer and the audience.

I’d love for people to be curious and involved in what we’re doing. Instead of the audience thinking ‘oh doesn’t that look lovely,’ I’d hope it would be an engagement between the audience and the performer.

MBM:Is this show true to other works? How is it different?

JL:I’ve worked a lot with other collaborators for this piece, just as I’ve contributed movement to other people’s works.

My last show, Confusion for three (2015) was another departure to what I had been doing at that time.  It was more of a destabilising flood of choreography where there was more risk involved. I’ve taken some things of the aesthetic of that which I’m still interested in, but I’ve refined things. In this show, there’s a lot of rigour – it’s quite physical.

A lot of consideration has gone into the costumes, sets, etc. for this show. I think it is a bit more epic to the others I’ve done.

Overture features Deanne Butterworth, Rebecca Jensen, Shian Law and Jo Lloyd. Overture is playing at Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall till Sunday, 19 August 2018. 

Oil Babies 
Arts House, 521 Queensberry St, North Melbourne
Till Sunday, 19 August 2018, 7pm
artshouse.com.au/events/overture

Pictures: Lachlan Woods