Engages,

Alice Heyward + Megan Payne Tongue rolls between smiles

Dates: Saturday 4, 11, 18 + 25 August

Weekly performances as part of “Lessons from Dancing”, an exhibition curated by Zoe Theodore at Bus Projects.

Saturday 4 - 25 August
11am - 12pm and 1pm - 2pm

TONGUE ROLLS BETWEEN SMILES
A performance by Alice Heyward and Megan Payne, performed by Megan Payne and Ivey Wawn.

‘Tongue rolls between smile’ moves through felt and image based definitions of being active, passive, supportive, connected and/or discrete.

The matter and malleability of its form, delineated by our edges, relies on feedback from external surfaces and is defined and made visible through touch. It takes place at and focuses on thickening and then neutralising our edges.

It’s a friendship; exploring ways of constituting and sharing the self with another. Letting yourself be moved, be soft, be the activity for another, be the activator, take your turn, consider where and when you took it, why you required one.

We can direct the ways that our form may be viewed – as a visceral spectacle, as two women grappling, graceful, sexual, forceful, tender. This type of external information is affective, but instead of letting it alter our tone, our involvement in the task, we integrate it into what we know, then notice and how we continue to define where things begin and end.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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Alice Heyward is a dancer and choreographer. She makes solo and group work, co-authored work and collaborative projects. Alice’s work is presented in Australia and Europe at Uferstudios, Sophiensaele (in the frame of Tanztage 2017) and within many group contexts. She is an ongoing resident at art/house project, Kunsthaus KuLe in Berlin. Here, she presented Imaginary Dances in frame of the Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2017. In 2016, her work Before the Fact was commissioned for the Keir Choreographic Award at Dancehouse, and Now Is Not The Place at gallery Murray White Room. In 2018, Future City Inflatable, her collaboration with Ellen Davies, premieres in Next Wave festival. She is a danceWEB scholarship recipient at Impulstanz International Dance Festival in Vienna mentored by Louise Höjer and Tino Sehgal. In 2018 she will develop her new work, Mutter, Matter at Lucy Guerin Inc. She works regularly as a collaborator-performer in the works of artists including Xavier Le Roy, Scarlet Yu, Alexandra Pirici, Alicia Frankovich, Hana Erdman, Geoffrey Watson, Mia Lawrence, Simone Forti, Maria Hassabi, Shelley Lasica, Female Trouble, Becky Hilton and Laurel Jenkins (for Trisha Brown), among others.

Megan Payne is a dancer and choreographer. After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts (2013) she worked with Russell Dumas’ Dance Exchange in ‘Room E100’ Larret Cultural-Centre (France); The Body Festival (Christchurch); ‘a day like any other’ ‘Reorienting the Post Colonial Symposium’, Institute of PostColonial Studies ‘Dance Remains,’ Monash University Museum of Art’. Megan has presented her own work at Testing Grounds in the Melbourne Fringe Festival with Ellen Davies, TCB Art Inc, Pitch Festival in collaboration with Alice Heyward and PSP, Memphis Gardens with Leah Landau and TBP-HQ. Megan has worked with artists including Shelley Lasica, Ivey Wawn, Chloe Chignell, Amanda Betlehem and Shian Law. Her practice has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, the Ian Potter Foundation, Ausdance through a DAIR residency at Frankston Arts Centre, Lucy Guerin Inc. Megan is studying Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University. She writes creative critique, nonfiction and poetry.

Ivey Wawn is an independent artist making dance-based work for a range of contexts. Drawing poetics from economics and microbial processes, with a focus on the political nature of exchange and transmission, Ivey develops choreographic blueprints that result in complex systems of transformation for the human scale as an invitation toward modes of care and consideration that may better-fit contemporary conditions. Ivey’s current research interests include microbial symbiosis, mourning processes and financial crisis. She is also studying political economy at the University of Sydney. Ivey has enjoyed the support of; AirSpace Projects, ALASKA Projects, Ausdance NSW, Australia Council for the Arts, Bundanon Trust, CRACK Theatre Festival, Critical Path, DanceWEB Scholarship (Impulstanz, Vienna), DirtyFeet, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, ReadyMade Works, Shopfront Contemporary Arts and Performance, The NOW now, and Underbelly Arts Festival. She has had the pleasure of working with and for; Andrew Hardwidge (UK), Angela Goh (AU), Atlanta Eke (AU), Brooke Stamp (AU), Germaine Kruip (BE/NL), Lizzie Thompson (AU), Louise Trueheart (FR/USA/DE), Mark Mailler (AU), Rainbow Chan (AU), Rhiannon Newton (AU), Rochelle Haley (AU), Scarlett Yu (HK/DE), Shota Matsumura (AU), Tino Sehgal (DE/UK), and Xavier Le Roy (FR) among others.