Beauty

Beauty

Restless Dance Theatre in association with Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE program briought a range of alternative visions of feminine beauty to the stage, which challenged the daily barrage of media images in the emotive and cerebral world premiere of Beauty.

Directed by acclaimed director and former Restless Dance Theatre Artistic Director, Ingrid Voorendt, Beauty was inspired by the work of Grace Coddington and Bill Henson. Featuring five female dancers it investigated notions of beauty, in relation and response to visual art and representations of the female body, classical sculpture and baroque music.

Director’s Note
‘Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out’ Albert Camus
Beauty has come from a desire to create something breathtakingly beautiful with Restless, and to return to a choreographic
focus. It has been directly inspired by working with certain Restless performers over my time with the company, in particular
the stunning Dana Nance. Our process for Beauty has drawn on images of women in visual art of the classical tradition, baroque music, investigations into looking and being looked at, and femininity. –Ingrid Voorendt

Presentations:

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, July 2010

Creative Team:
Director Ingrid Voorendt
Associate Director Daniel Koerner
Design Gaelle Mellis
Lighting Ben Shaw
Sound DJ TR!P
Photographer Shane Reid

Performers:

Alison Currie, Jianna Georgiou, Kyra Kimpton, Dana Nance, Anastasia Retallack

Reviews:
“The dancers were clearly showing us the leisure lifestyle of Greek goddesses or nymphs on their day off, just swanning about and generally admiring themselves. These young women are exactly the opposite of the dancers that would usually be cast in these roles and it is here that the first challenge to the audience is posed as the dancers themselves are totally assured of their own claim to the concept of beauty.
This is so prevalent that anyone who may have been feeling nervous for these girls and that their inabilities may be exposed would soon be plunged into doubting themselves in comparison to these subtly confident visions on stage. If they are ‘disabled’ and yet so self-assured why do all of these other ‘normal’ young women worry so much about body image issues? Gratitude to Restless and the performers for bringing perspective and hope.”
– Lana Cole, Libertine Magazine

Information for Presenters

past shows

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