Image by Eduardo Cossio.
REST DUET is an improvised practice Josten Myburgh and I have developed since meeting in the 2018 Perth Festival Lab. We have collaborated on numerous productions including multidisciplinary residencies, generous practice and community building initiatives for independent artists, durational improvisation with ensembles of musicians and dancers and patient creative developments towards large-scale theatrical and festival settings.
Despite being artists of different disciplines, Josten and I regard each other as among the most like-minded peers we each have in our Boorloo arts community. The strongest and distinct parts of our respective skillsets are highlighted by working together.
Improvisation as methodology is a throughline in all of our collaborations. REST DUET is the most radical distillation of this. The work features just me and Josten: I dance, they play saxophone (acoustic and unamplified). Developing a live unfolding performance with these tools involves rigorous worldbuilding, carving out a highly defined and specific choreographic-sonic space. With each iteration of REST DUET we further reveal and understand this world.
Our very first duet happened during an experiment at OPEN HOUSE (in this 2018 initiative I opened my home once a week for independent artists to come and share practice).
Our first public performance - irreverent and focused - happened at Maylands Yacht Club as part of Outcome Unknown.
In 2023 we toured to Ōtepoti, Ōhinehou, Te Whanganui a Tara & Tāmaki Makaurau (Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland), including a collaborative performance with local artists on the final night.
Supported by my Caroline Plummer Fellowship at the University of Otago, and the West Australian Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. Special thanks to the many people who generously hosted / helped us while touring to these fantastic venues: Yours, Lyttelton Coffee Co, Pyramid Club and Audio Foundation.
After our tour of Aoteroa, Tone List presented a home coming performance of REST DUET in Boorloo (Perth) at the Maylands Yacht Club.
Daisy Sanders and Josten Myburgh
"REST DUET embodies an ethic of commitment to honest presence in the moment, a fidelity to depth and rigour of practice over scale and spectacle, and a belief in the abundant rewards of decisive risk within loving and trusting relationships to reveal new possibilities about how to act with integrity."