BUNNY – the Workshop
In BUNNY, the materiality of rope has lent itself very well to the language of relationality. Our investigations have obliged us to appreciate the physical properties of rope, the aesthetics of knots, and the rich language shared between bodies when connected by rope. More importantly, both of us are concerned with how working with rope could help us rediscover our respective physical practices in dance. A movement practice with ropes, makes visible lines of tension and friction, and inspires a heightened sense of shared experience.
In this workshop, we will extract principles and exercises that we have developed over the process of creating BUNNY. We will explore the politics of intimacy that are revealed by the differences between doing and observing, seeing and being seen, leading and being led.
raised in Tasmania and based in Melbourne, Luke George creates new performance work locally, internationally and interculturally, through experimental creative processes with collaborating artists. George takes daring and at times unorthodox methods to explore new intimacies and connections between audience and performers. His works LIFESIZE (2008), NOW NOW NOW (2010), NOT ABOUT FACE (2013), EROTIC DANCE (2016) and BUNNY (2016) have been presented extensively throughout Australia, and internationally in France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, and the USA. Since receiving his BA from the Victorian College of the Arts, George has collaborated and performed in the works of many acclaimed dance and theatre companies, in music, visual art, live art, and socially engaged projects, and at queer clubs, both in Australia and internationally. George was a recipient of two Melbourne Fringe Awards (1999, 2013), the Asialink Residency (2005), the Russell Page Fellowship (2007), the Greenroom Award for Best Male Dancer (2011), and of various commissions including by the Sydney Opera House (2006), the Keir Foundation (2008), Lucy Guerin Inc (2010), Phantom Limbs (2013), the Chocolate Factory Theater (2014), the Phillip Adams Balletlab (2015) and the Campbelltown Arts Centre (2016). George is also a massage therapist and practitioner of Kinbaku (rope bondage).
is an alumnus of Goldsmiths College (London), where he obtained a BA (Honours) in fine art & critical theory. He also received an MA (Distinction) in Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT, Berlin), and completed the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (APASS) programme in Brussels. In 2008, he received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council (Singapore). His performance works deal with the relational politics in spectatorship and audienceship. Q&A (2009), Planet Romeo (2011),Cheerleader of Europe (2013), ALPHA (2014), PIIGS (2015) and BUNNY (2016) have been presented across Asia, Europe, Australia, and the USA. In 2017, he was commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of the Arts to create MARK, a large-scale outdoor drawing-and-dance performance. As a pole dancer, he won the SG Pole Challenge (2012) and represented Singapore at the International Pole Championships (IPC, 2013). He is currently researching queerness and a notion of trans-individuality through what he dubs The Octopus Practice.