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HAPPY HOUR #16

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We are delighted to announce the 16th edition of our Happy Hour Series.

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"As I have sat and considered describing what people will see this coming Happy Hour, a question keeps arising for me – how can the body become a living vessel of culture, an embodied and breathing site of intangible cultural heritage?

 

The dynamics of intergenerational knowledge, gamified play, House dance music and culture, contemporary and street dance, installation, film, spoken word and the re-enlivening of the work of New York-based choreographer, Merce Cunningham, offer contemporary stories back to this provocation. I look forward to Happy Hour audiences witnessing the death of ego and the birth of a new generation of dance artists." - Happy Hour #16 curator Reina Takeuchi

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Artists:  Amy Zhang  with Billy Keohavong and Jackson Garcia, Caya Crew, Madfox, Charemaine Seet/Seet Dance with Alia Ardon and Melissa Toogood

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Happy Hour is ReadyMade Works' signature short works program showcasing the extraordinary practices of Sydney's independent dance artists. Initiated by Linda Luke and Samantha Chester in 2016, Happy Hour is the platform for encountering the diverse and uncompromising work being made by local dance artists.

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Date: Nov, Sat 25th - Sun 26th 2023

Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm AEDT

Cost: $15

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Line up 

Saturday - Amy Zhang with Billy Keohavong and Jackson Garcia, Caya Crew, Madfox

Sunday - Seet Dance, Caya Crew, Madfox

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Curator - REINA TAKEUCHI

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Reina Takeuchi is a Japanese Australian dance artist, curator and choreographer interested in cross-cultural exchange. Her performance projects have included installations at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and SomoS Arts, Berlin and performances for Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, Performance Space, and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Late program. She has worked with numerous Australian and international choreographers including Sue Healey, Idan Cohen, Leah MarojeviĆ, Meryl Tankard and Vicki Van Hout. She holds a Master of Philosophy in Creative Practice from QUT and an Advanced Diploma in Dance Performance from the Sydney Dance Company Pre-Professional Year 2019. She is a PhD candidate at QUT, focusing on Asian Australian performance for her research project Countermoves of the Transcultural.

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Artists 

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AMY ZHANG

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If life is a game, then all we have to do is play. [ gameboy ] drops two avatars into the game of life. Will they win? 

A dance theatre work created by Amy Zhang. Featuring William (Billy) Keohavong and Jackson Garcia.

 

Bio

Amy Zhang is a Chinese-Australian movement artist that specialises in performance, movement direction and choreography. Her work spans across theatre, live performance, musical theatre, film, tv and digital art. Her practice is grounded in Chinese ways of knowing and storytelling and experiments with the intersections of street style foundations and contemporary frameworks to tell stories through movement.

 

At its core, Amy's work is rooted in collaboration. She is interested in how we can better build intimacy through the cross-cultural exchange of knowledge and movement and use this as the framework for how we can better collaborate with others.

 

She has created work with various artists and organisations across Australia including Performance Space, AGNSW, Arts House, The Hayes Theatre, Brisbane Festival, First Draft, Belvoir St Theatre, Supercell Festival, Vitalstatistix, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Critical Path and Diversity Arts. Amy was also an artist in residence at the City of Sydney Live/Work residency in 2019-2020.

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CAYA CREW

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Embers is a manifestation of the life-giving power of House music and its call to raw and instinctive expression. Embers will take you on an explorative journey through innocence, nurture, curiosity, joy, freedom, unity, death of ego and love.

 

Bio

Caya (Come As You Are) was established in 2021 from a mutual love of House music, dance and culture, specifically the community and expression that emerged during the late 70’s and early 80’s in underground clubs in New York and Chicago. Members include Florence Wai Ling Cheng (Saiki), Karen Reyes (Mirage) and Jessica Tingting He (Jemz). To deepen their understanding of rhythm and movement, Caya has travelled to Africa and New York, the birthplace of House culture, and learnt from the pioneers of the dance themselves. They continue to explore and share the richness of House culture through a spiritual lens emphasising community building and passionate expressions of female identity, culture and heritage.

 

MADFOX

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Unfoldment is an exploration of the self – the shadows, fantasies and layers of puzzlement we must deconstruct to set ourselves free. Utilising freestyle movement inspired by Waacking, spoken word poetry and photographic portraiture, unfoldment delves into the process of self-journey in search of trust, identity and tranquillity navigating in pools of doubt and destruction. 

 

Bio

 Maggie Madfox is an Australian-based Chinese artist, creative director, producer, filmmaker and photographer. She believes all art forms are rooted in the basis of human experience. Through traversing creativity via different mediums, Madfox's practice centres on reflection, resonance, curiosity and agency. The vast possibilities of visual art, in both physical and digital worlds, inspire her to create authentically through lived experiences with transdisciplinary outlets.

 

Madfox's recent achievements include - being the recipient of the Singal's Young Artist Award in 2020 and Green Room nominations in 2021; the winner of the Australian Waacking Tournament 2023 as well as the winner of BBK 2023 in Brno, Czech Republic. Her films have also been selected to screen at the Destructive Steps Film Festival in 2022 and 2023.

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SEET DANCE

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"New York Conversations" -- A film by Alia Ardon  

 

Alia Ardon, the new guard of dance filmmakers, documents an ephemeral moment in Australian dance... 

Teenage dancers from Sydney’s Seet Dance studio work with former Merce Cunningham Company dancer Melissa Toogood on restaging Field Dances, a rare 1963 work by Cunningham. A poetic homage to dance and art, an archive, a collaboration between the past and the present. 

 

Join Melissa Toogood, Charemaine Seet and some of the young dancers in discussion with Reina Takeuchi. 

Bio

Melissa Toogood (Stager) is an award winning Performer. She was a member of Merce Cunningham’s final company and is an official stager for the Merce Cunningham Trust. She has taught Cunningham Technique internationally since 2007 and is a 2013 & 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow. Melissa currently resides in Sydney, but continues to perform internationally with Pam Tanowitz Dance (NYC), where she also serves as Rehearsal Director and Artistic Associate. Her own work has been commissioned by Boston Ballet, New York Theater Ballet and the Vail International Dance Festival.

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Alia Ardon is an emerging Australian-Moroccan-French filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist born on Gadigal land and currently based in Beirut. Intrigued by the moving image and its intersection with bodies and their position in the world, her work is a reflection of her practices, from dance to film to research. Her work has been shown in so-called Australia, Asia and Europe. Alia has been making films for Seet Dance since she was 15 years old. 

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Charemaine is a dance artist straddling post-modern dance and street dance practice. She has been a principal dancer in Union Dance Company in London and Doug Elkins Company in New York and has collaborated with Elkins for two decades. Charemaine is working on a long-term performance piece titled #6 Daughter which explores the movement and gestures of Teochew Opera, her dialect group’s form of Chinese opera. 

Charemaine is the founder and director of Seet Dance, one of Australia’s most innovative contemporary dance schools. Her dancers have collaborated with visual and dance artists such as Angel Goh and Deborah Kelly. As an educator, she is primarily concerned in decentering contemporary dance away from Western aesthetics. She also leads several dance workshops at the Sydney Opera House and is a sessional trainer at NAISDA Dance College.

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Happy Hour is supported by City of Sydney and Create NSW.

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