Having recently completed my Make a Start residency at LGI, I wanted to share and reflect on my initial choreographic concepts and their evolution through studio experiments and unforeseen circumstances.
I am developing a solo performance work, Slapdash, created through choreographic collage, gathering movement materials from my peers, mentors and inspirations. I’m interested in exploiting the blurriness of authorship in dance due to its corporeal medium, drawing on appropriative practices from other art forms, and questioning the value systems applied to choreography as intellectual property within a broader sociocultural context.
Studio processes began with material collection, largely from internet video sources, and the learning of movement. I began to fixate on this mode of embodiment through digital deferral, my learning feeling detached and awkward through video, with ample opportunity for misinterpretation or loss of detail, an unintended defacing of the original work. I would then film myself in the studio reciting the learned movement and relearn these recordings, amplifying mistakes or differences, the copy of copy of copy corroding further from its source.
I also fixated on my own recordings, looking to them as generative material for short form video. Inspired by the framing of dance via social media, I would edit myself with tacky effects, trending sounds, loops, superimpositions and layers, sacrificing movement for affect and visual clutter. My face is self-deprecatingly slapped over the top of these videos, as a symbol of both reckless theft, as I stake my claim, and of vanity and the positioning of self image in our use of social media platforms. These videos feel haunting or unsettling to me, perhaps reflecting a looming consequence of my theft, an essence of the original artists, or the unease and tension I feel around the subject matter of this work.
Due to health complications, my studio time was halted and subsequently split into two blocks. Ruminating on my health scare and considering the fallibility of my body, I wanted to explore exploitation of my body and investigate physical limitation. We often see a dancing body presented as confidently executing the task at hand, and I want to challenge this trope. I am exploring the dramaturgy of incompetence or mediocrity, and corrupting movement material through failure. I imagine displaying my vulnerable, imperfect body in this way will reveal a complex tension between humour and melancholic humanness, prying open the spaces between choreographic material, my attempt and its observation.
I’ve been collaborating closely with Robert Downie on composition, beginning to explore the sonic landscape of this work. Downie’s sound, like my choreographic process, steals and samples from other artists, specifically from music composed for dance. We’re also experimenting with recordings and live feed of my voice as instrumentation. Ideas riff and expand quickly between us, and it was a treat to feel the vibrancy of our creative partnership, each enabling the other to try new things and push concepts and experiments further.
This residency at LGI has grounded my ideas in choreographic form, allowed for generative collaboration, birthed new aspects of the work and laid a solid foundation for further development. Slapdash is challenging, exciting and problematic, and I’m so thankful and encouraged that my take on these controversial ideas could be valued for their creative potential. I’ll continue the trajectory of this work at Temperance Hall through their Front Studio Residency program, and I’m keen to show the work in progress in April.
– Oliver Savariego
About Oliver Savariego
Oliver Savariego is a dancer and choreographer based in Naarm/Melbourne. His work questions and queers aesthetic values within dance, blends ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and examines the lines between inspiration, reference and appropriation. In 2018, he created Untitled with Stuart Shugg, in residence at Bennington College in 2018. He created Surface Area with Chloe Arnott in Prahran Skate Park as part of Melbourne Fringe 2018. In 2021, he created Creche, an online installation reflecting on childhood and nostalgia, reimagined for live performance in 2023 and presented by Dancehouse. Oliver has collaborated extensively within the Australian dance community. He is currently working with Lucy Guerin Inc, has performed with Phillip Adams Balletlab, Tasdance and Sydney Dance Company, and has worked with independent artists Shelley Lasica, Jo Lloyd, Melanie Lane, Sandra Parker, Harrison Ritchie Jones among many others. His performance in Triptych by Phillip Adams in 2023 won a Green Room award for Best Dance Ensemble, and most recently his collaboration in Sandra Parker’s Safehold won the 2024 Greenroom award for Best Choreography.