Make Your Life Count
Sarah Aiken and Collaborators
World Premiere
Presented by Arts House and Sarah Aiken and Collaborators
Wed 23 – Sun 27 Feb, 2022
Wed – Sat, 7.30pm
Sun, 5pm
Auslan Interpreted performance
Fri 25 Feb
Duration
60min
Tickets
General Admission $20
BLAKTIX $10
A small transaction fee will be charged per order.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne
Read our COVID-19 Safety Plan here.
Loosen your sense of self in a kaleidoscopic dance work of constantly shifting scale.
Are you too much to handle or too small to matter?
Make Your Life Count is an ambitious dance work that shifts scale in a heartbeat- from the microscopic to the universal. Choreographer and dancer Sarah Aiken encounters her own self expanded to infinite proportions or shrunken to painful insignificance, stretched into new dimensions or flattened into mute landscapes.
This powerful feat of imagination is a serious attempt to grapple with the paradoxes of modern life, in which the individual is swollen to grotesque importance while also reduced to an ineffectual, even invisible impotence.
Whether monstrous and destructive or lost in the crushing scale of humanity, ecology, time and the universe, this perspective-shifting work is a chance to lose yourself, and maybe find something better instead.
“Her body becomes a sculptural object… beautifully wrought, an exercise in simplicity and innovation” – Varia Karipoff, RealTime
“Aiken’s work is a delight with its own personality, fully engaged with wit and visual verbal wordplay” – Liza Dezfouli, Australian Stage
“…definitional, capstone works of the emerging generation of Australian choreographers” – Jana Perkovic, The Age
Images: Tiffany Garvie
Artist Statement
In trying to make a positive mark on the world I need to learn (and love) how little I matter and how powerful that can be. With so much of our lives and identities commodified, we can’t look away from ourselves, so I’m looking even closer, zooming right in, in an attempt to lose sight of the boundaries of self – to see myself as an assemblage without defined edges.
About the Artist
Sarah has presented work nationally and internationally including Dance Massive, Arts Centre Melbourne, Castlemaine State Festival, Dancehouse (Housemate Resident XIV), The Substation/LGI, Keir Choreographic Awards (finalist 2014 and 2016), VCA, Brisbane Festival, PICA, Ian Potter Museum, Immigration Museum, Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie (Paris), and Dancemakers Toronto. Sarah is an Australia Council artist in residence at HIAP, Helsinki and is developing new works for video.
Credits
Video: Sarah Aiken
Composition: Andrew Wilson
Technical and creative support: Daniel Arnott
Text: Megan Payne with Sarah Aiken
Lighting: Amelia Lever-Davidson
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. and the City of Melbourne through Arts House. Development supported by Lucy Guerin Inc/WXYZ space residency.
World Premiere
Presented by Arts House and Sarah Aiken and Collaborators
Wed 23 – Sun 27 Feb, 2022
Wed – Sat, 7.30pm
Sun, 5pm
Auslan Interpreted performance
Fri 25 Feb
Duration
60min
Tickets
General Admission $20
BLAKTIX $10
A small transaction fee will be charged per order.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne
Read our COVID-19 Safety Plan here.
Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti
Image description: Woman dressed in orange, stands in front of a her self. The smaller figure in the foreground stands in profile, with an uncertain expression, half turned toward the larger version, who points a finger and stares out directly.