Deep Sea Dances

Ubiquitously used as an analogy for something we do not understand, the deep sea signifies paradox, terror, hope and potential. Largely undiscovered it is inhabited by our ancestors whom we shared paths with until relatively recently, as we moved towards the beach and they towards the blackness of primaeval night in which the ocean came into being. This text is a form of visual and written notation for Deep Sea Dances, an improvised group work created across 2015–17 and performed in Dance Massive Festival, Melbourne 2017. This notation can be interpreted to re-enact excerpts from the work and can be built upon and developed into something else. Deep Sea Dances developed out of a desire to create a space to share practice and build a common movement language with a group of sixteen peers, balancing what is theoretical with the social and practical and to utilize performance as a means of reflection and a denouncement of political systems that foster binary relations and thinking.