THE indepenDANCE PROJECT ARTIST PROFILE 9 Courtney Scheu - Choreographer Who are you? I’m Courtney Scheu. I’m a dancer, choreographer, teacher, yogi, runner, retail worker and lover of new music, puzzles and bush walks What makes you tick? I once read an interview with Mariana Abramović. She was talking about her artistic philosophy and said: “The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit. We can put the human spirit down so easily. Art reflecting society as it is today is not the answer because it is already shitty, so why put more shit into it? You have to find a way to elevate the spirit so that its a kind of oxygen to society.” If I were to look back at the work that I have made, I would say that this best represents my motivation. My works are also heavily inspired by text: novels, poems, definitions, instruction manuals and the likes. What don’t we know about you? I love catching the time when the hour and minutes are the same i.e. 5:55, 11:11 etc. I have a screen shot in my phone of the time at 2:22 and my battery at 22%. Funniest/weirdest performance moment? After finishing a show in a primary school in Biloela, a girl came up to me and said “If you hold your hand to your ear you can hear the wind…” The first thing I do after falling over on stage is smile (it’s quite an uncontrollable reaction for me)? Who is your most influential artist? Gabrielle Nankivell. https://youtube/watch?v=Cy4Buyl7Yh8 Something you were told as a young dancer that you now know is bullshit? “Don’t use your butt.” This is a completely ridiculous idea. It means that you disengage your glute max and attempt to extend with your rotators. This causes you to over work your lower back and hip flexors and it just leads to problems in general. Something you were told as a young dancer that still inspires you? “Australians are known internationally for taking up space when they dance.” What excites you about THE IndepenDANCE PROJECT? A chance to test out a crazy idea with some wicked dancers. What’s happening in the studio at the moment? I have been touring for Artslink with Liesel Zink. We are performing her dance theatre works Shift and No Way in schools all over Queensland. I am working with scenographer Tessa Smallhorn, looking at the relationship between dance and responsive technology. Our conceptual focus is on the human brain - its function and its failures - and different ways of combining dance and technology so that they are intrinsically linked. I am collaborating with 4 dance makers from Victoria on a contemporary dance work that deals with long distance communication and relationships, connecting and coordinating a performance in three different locations simultaneously, live streaming through Google Hangouts. I am choreographing a solo on myself for the first time since University. What is your first dancing memory? In my first year of ballet, I recall sitting in a circle and my dance teacher (Anne Fraser) telling us that a dragon lived under the arch of our foot and if we rolled in, we would close the cave, the dragon would get a fright and breathe fire.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 08:50:19 +0000
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