Passing Through & Passing Down Time

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Dancing Sydney Archive Project

Narelle Benjamin

I began my archiving project through Critical Path in December 2019, just before packing up our home in Sydney and moving to America. This was such a poignant time for me to be doing this project as I was going through my entire life’s belongings, deciding what to put in storage, what was no longer important to hold onto, and what had sentimental importance or value to pass onto my children. Archiving my life’s work as a dancer and choreographer during this period was an extension of this process for me and certainly cathartic, as well as incredibly nostalgic. It also felt like the end of an era. Will I continue to make work, teach? What will unfold for me in America, what new direction will I find or take, and what is important to me at this point in my career and life?

It was certainly a reflective and enjoyable process working from home in my own surroundings and time, and sorting through everything from over the last 30 years or more. I was amazed at how much I had actually stored away – studio rehearsal footage, choreography, and solo musings over the years.

As part of this archiving project I was also interested in working in the studio with my daughter and professional dancer Marlo Benjamin, and passing on some of my choreographic vocabulary, yoga practise, and ways of working with her. We did this in Sydney, and in Adelaide at the Tanja Liedtke Studio, thanks to Australian Dance Theatre director Garry Stewart. This was also significant for me, as I danced with Tanja back in 2000 for the first season of ADT’s Birdbrain so it was very special to be working in this room with my daughter.

“It wasn’t until I was about 18 and was trying to get in to the arts myself, that I fully began to understand the influence of my mum’s presence in the dance world. Discovering her wisdom and teachings from that different perspective, really shifted my intention to want to learn and absorb as much from her as I could, as quickly as I could. I think subconsciously I was always watching closely and definitely recreating similar aesthetic movement pathways, but trying to discover them through my own experiences. Throughout my career, often I would work with someone that had also worked with mum over the 30 + years, and I would constantly be told how similar I was to her. Of course this was the hugest compliment, and also carried a lot of pressure for me to try and live up to! After spending the last few years really finding my own voice in the community, it’s been the biggest joy and pleasure to return back to the studio with my mum. It feels incredibly special to be able to share a similar language, and to continue to learn from and discover her rich history and teachings through her entire body and being.

It has been most inspiring to have been able to watch her love and commitment to the body and artistic visions which continue to evolve and grow, from up close. I really have to thank her for sharing her (literal) body of knowledge, soft guidance and support in my own artistic endeavours!”

– Marlo Benjamin

In Sydney Marlo and I worked at the Drill Hall which has been home to many independent artists, and where I did my first research developments through Critical Path’s responsive residencies for my works In Glass and Hiding in Plain Sight, and somatic research as part of my Australia Council Fellowship. I have also been a part of many processes, workshops and research projects with other artists over the years with Critical Path. Marlo and I also worked at Amera’s Palace, a belly dancing studio in Marrickville, Sydney, where I often worked at in rehearsing for Hiding in Plain Sight, Cella, and other personal projects. So, in effect, this was archiving the archive, passing on my choreography and physical embodiment of choreographic material, and sharing spaces and history with my daughter who is a fulltime dancer with Australasian Dance Collective in Brisbane and Dance North next year.

One of the things that really came to light for me during this archiving process was how important place and space has been to me: the history in the spaces you work in, the artists you work with in these spaces, and the works and processes that have come to life in these spaces. Reflecting during this archiving process took me back to specific moments in time, and the memory of the creations in the studios, more so than the performances or finished shows. Becoming a part of one’s space/home ontologically as well as geographically has been a theme I have been interested in for many years. This has informed some of my works, in particular Hiding in Plain Sight (2014) at Carriageworks with Performance Space.

This also brought to life the idea for the video Pause.

Pause

A series of home dance videos in response to the lockdown isolation due to COVID 19.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I continued doing my yoga practise every day at home. After a few weeks, I felt like I had become part of this new space, home, that blurry line between your physical body and the environment you inhabit. Being isolated and in lockdown here in America felt heightened for me as I was away from Australia, so far away from all of my friends and family besides my husband and son.

So, I grew a desire to connect with my artist friends, family, and people I have had a really close connection to. I wanted to create a moving portrait of my creative community, so I sent out an email to see who would be interested in contributing to making a video to mark this time in history together. Even if just for us all to connect while in isolation, and for our generation’s collective archives. Once I started assembling the clips together, I was really interested in creating the illusion that we were all moving together simultaneously - sharing a moment in time, and connecting together through creativity in this surreal time of isolation.

The Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade talks about home; an ontological as well as geographical home, and in a lovely phrase he calls home “the heart of the real”. Home, he tells us, is the intersection of two lines, the vertical and the horizontal. The vertical plane has heaven, or the upper world, at one end, and the world of the dead at the other end. The horizontal is the traffic of this world, moving to and fro, our own traffic and that of teeming others. Home is a place of order. A place where the order of things come together, the living and the dead, the spirits of the ancestors and the present inhabitants, and the gathering up of all the to- and fro.

The resulting video is incredibly personal and intimate. It conveys feelings of solitude, reflection, and the pause from our everyday lives, and the pace we were all so used to. Yet it also embodies the frustration, anxiety, confinement, and longing to move forward from this period. And thank goodness there is some humour in there as well, capturing the multitude of feelings we have all encountered in this year.

Pause was featured with the re-launch of the ReelDance Archive in September 2020, instigated by Erin Brannigan. This was a suitable fit as many artists in the video had been involved in ReelDance over the years as directors, choreographers, and dancers.

ReelDance was a rich time for dance on film in Australia. It brought many artists from different disciplines together and inspired us to create films and further our choreographic practise through the film medium. It was also enriching to see other dance films from around the world. The re-launch of this archive is so significant as it gives the younger generation access to it as both a research tool and, hopefully, a rich source of inspiration that informs their own artistic investigations.

Pause 2020: The Home Project

You can watch Pause at vimeo.com/452895229

Concept and Edit: Narelle Benjamin

Sound Design: Huey Benjamin

Performers: Kate Dunn, Frances Rings, Brian Carbee, Garry Stewart, Maddie Ziegler, Dean Walsh, Kay Armstrong, Julie-Anne Long, Martin del Amo, Sara Black, Benjamin Hancock, Sue Healey, Alice Cummins, Marlo Benjamin, Josh Mu, Kristina Chan, Paul White, Kathy Cogill, Claudia Alessi, Jazmine Lancaster, Anton, Narelle Benjamin