Last week, Joel Bray turned 44. “That’s pretty old for a dancer,” he reflects.
Over the past 12 months Bray has toured works across Australia and Europe, taken up a new role as associate artist at Geelong Arts Centre, and begun the creative process on a yet-to-be-announced project.
Choreographers and dancers Alisdair Macindoe, Tra Mi Dinh and Joel BrayCredit: Arsineh Houspian
“I’ve had a big dancing year, and my body’s quite tired – it doesn’t bounce back like it once did.”
Instead of trying to hold onto something that is slipping away, however, he’s leaning into the changes to his body through a new work, Swallow.
“I’ve really been exploring how I can work with ease and kind of with my age, rather than against my age – rather than trying to replicate how I once used to dance when I was younger and fitter.”
Swallow is a means for Bray to explore a few different threads of his life. “A lot of my work is interested in the intersection of my identity as a Wiradjuri man with my identity as a queer man.”
Joel Bray.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
In his previous work, Homo Pentecostus, he explored how he adopted the Welcome Swallow as his totem – a thread he has picked up here. “She’s flirty and she darts around and she’s super social,” he explains.
“Swallow is really an exploration of birds, and the movement of birds, and my affection for this animal. But also I love a double entendre,” he adds with a laugh. “So I also enjoy the other meaning of swallow – and the work is very, very queer.”
Bray’s work is one of three commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc and UMAC (University of Melbourne Arts and Culture) for Pieces, an annual series where choreographers are given three weeks to come up with a 20-minute work.
Pieces has been running since 2005, and over 19 years has grown from a program that originally only had space for 20 audience members, to being performed this year in Melbourne University’s Union Theatre.
Lucy Guerin started Pieces in 2005. Credit: Arsineh Houspian
“It’s one of my favourite programs that we do in the year,” says renowned Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin. One of the key things she highlights is not just the strength of the individual works, but the way they interact and connect with each other.
“Each year the three works sit together, and sometimes they’re really, really different,” she says.
“This year, it does feel like they’re a little more connected. So it’s always a surprise as to what the whole evening will be like, and what the kind of impression that the whole evening will give to the audience.”
This year, Bray’s work is joined by “OK, bye!” by Alisdair Macindoe, a meditation on death and the afterlife, and Seven dances for two people by Tra Mi Dinh, an exploration of the significance behind the number seven.
“OK, Bye!” began as a collaboration between Macindoe and his mother, concert harpist xanya mamunya, and is dedicated to her. “I grew up listening to her practicing in the lounge room my entire childhood,” Macindoe explains. “I think I became a dancer partly due to waking up in the morning to someone playing concert harp music.”
The work marries music, dance and technology in surprising ways, perhaps most so through the self-playing instruments featured on stage. “[They] are all acoustic instruments that are played mechanically by some sort of, like, robotics or electronic mechanics that I’ve built myself in collaboration with a friend of mine who does the firmware,” explains Macindoe.
Seven dances for two people, meanwhile – a duet with dancer Rachel Coulson – initially sprung from Dinh being drawn to the number seven. “It just comes up so many times again and again, across cultures, across place and time,” she says, pointing to constellations, musical notes and the number of colours in the spectrum.
“It’s my favourite number, and I was really keen to have a bit of a play around with what the rhythmic structures of a seven can do to movement.”
All three dancers are recipients of the Chloe Munro Bequest, which offered funds to 20 dancers and choreographers to use however they see fit. The impact of the funds can be seen in both overt and more quiet ways.
For both Dinh and Bray, the funds meant that when faced with the crossroads of whether to keep pursuing dance as a career, they were given both the means and the confidence to continue. “It was an incredible boost for my own self-confidence in my practice,” says Dinh.
“It’s almost impossible to describe how deeply the Munro fellowship has impacted my practice, and it does directly relate to this, because to build those acoustic instruments and robotics was something I was able to do,” says Macindoe. “What it means is I can dream bigger.”
Pieces is at Melbourne University’s Union Theatre from November 28 to 30.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it every Friday.