Images by Sophie Minissale & Melanie Naumoff.
NIGHT DANCING is an outdoor roaming experience: part dance, part sound installation, part community gathering. It explores the safety of female and non-binary bodies in the street after dark, weaving the subtle poetry / politics of walking and witnessing into unexpected pockets of the city. Audience are invited to experience their urban landscape anew in a moving meditation on reclamation and collective care.
Doubling as a generous youth and community project, NIGHT DANCING sessions include menstrual cycle education, taking time to eat, rest, share and bond deeply. Family members, particularly daughters and dogs, are included as often as possible. The project aims to transcend fear, shame and division and instead gently propose a way of being together that is radically cyclical, embodied, reflective and celebratory.
The project has been ongoing since 2020. To learn more please see related project Women Distance Dance and explore the events listed below.
"we dive in deeper, we move from how we feel
we forgive ourselves, we meet our demons, we know our power"
This early development stage of NIGHT DANCING was a nuanced exploration of the project's heart and process.
A group of women and non-binary artists discovered significant vulnerability and worked together to intentionally build an ecology that was dedicated, loving and honest.
Daisy Sanders
Simone Detourbet
Phoebe Sullivan
Bobby Russell
Shuling Wong
Natassija Morrow
Annika Moses (sound)
Ella Hetherington (dramaturgy)
Laura Boynes (provocation)
Maddie Godfrey (writer in residence)
Lucy Peach (guest artist)
This iteration of NIGHT DANCING was supported by STRUT Dance, State Theatre Centre WA and His Majesty’s Theatre.
“Audience and performers move together through city streets at night. The journey includes becoming quiet together - listening and watching more acutely in order to experience the city in a new way. We gather somewhere safe but mysterious; a place to share truths, revelations and bear witness. There is an invitation to partake in a 'cycle’ of easy, reflective dialogue, and to be gently irreverent in a shared reclamation of the streets.”
For Kickstart Festival 2022 NIGHT DANCING grew into a roving dance-theatre experience and a playful proposition of how we can come together and build a momentary but real community.
Daisy Sanders
Shuling Wong
Natassija Morrow
Storm Helmore
Mani Mae Gomes
Ebony Macguire
Tanya Rodin
Tess Crow CR0NES (sound)
Sze Tsang (sound)
Izzy French (sound intern)
Ellen Hope Thomson (producer intern)
Ella Hetherington (dramaturgy)
Simone Detourbet (provocation)
Lucy Birkinshaw (design consultant)
Kate Makowiecka (food)
This iteration of the project was supported by State Theatre Centre WA, Propel Youth Arts and the West Australian Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
Thanks to Liz Goddard and family, this iteration of NIGHT DANCING was a retreat style gathering in a wonderful beach shack in Quedjinup (Dunsborough) on Wadandi Country, with close access to the magic of Meelup National Park.
meelup: place of rising moon
Our 2024 weekend away included daily yoga, dancing, beach walks, cyclical conversations, menstrual education, witnessing and hearing one another and much sharing of food.
Mani Mae Gomes
Natassija Morrow
Annmarie Clifton James
Madilynn Bayliss
Izzy Leclezio
Estelle Brown
Lara Dorling
Danni Cook
Sze Tsang (sound)
Melanie Naumoff (community)
As NIGHT DANCING grows further into its potential as both a community engagement project and a roving performance, the process of connecting through kindness, listening and honesty will remain an essential priority.
Women identifying and non-binary artists who are comfortable exploring movement and the menstrual cycle are invited to take part in NIGHT DANCING.
The team of this fluid creative project ebbs and flows, constantly changing and welcoming many wonderful different people across ages, genders and creative fields (dance, theatre, immersive sound, community arts).
-
Daisy Sanders
Lead artist / community builder -
Mani Mae Gomes, Natassija Morrow, Storm Helmore, Shuling Wong, Ebony Macguire
Core artists -
Tess Crow (CR0NES), Sze Tsang, Annika Moses
Sound artists -
Lucy Peach
Guest artist
may we dance freely
with ourselves
in the streets
with our joy
with our pain
in the night
and with each other