THE FARM
Gavin Webber
AUS
GAVIN WEBBER
Gavin Webber is a choreographer, teacher and performer based in Coolangatta, Queensland and working between Australia and Europe.
Gavin Webber started dancing late after many lost years spent hitch-hiking, skiing, writing, camping and studying. Eventually he decided to start making art instead and joined Meryl Takard’s Australian Dance Theatre and following that Belgian company Ultima Vez.
Throughout his career Gavin has worked between Australia and Europe and was Artistic Director of Dancenorth from 2005 to 2009. He took the company from regional Australia to national and international touring and then left for Europe once again to join PVCtanz in Germany. His present role is as co-Artistic Director of The Farm, a company based on the Gold Coast, Queensland, whose work has been seen across four continents. With The Farm, Gavin has collaboratively created works such as Cockfight, Frank Enstein, The Crossing, The Ninth Wave and TIDE.
In 2017 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Individual Performing Arts Award and in 2018 The Farm won a Helpmann for TIDE. He still writes, camps and studies but the hitch-hiking and skiing is over for the time being at least.
Photo: Kate Holmes
KAYAH GUENTHER
Kayah is a regional New South Wales based artist whose practice crosses dance/theatre and film. He has had a wide range of experience working with various artists/choreographers. Through the Screenworks “Createability” program he collaborated with HW Collective (Poppy Walker and Sophie Hexter) on the multi award-winning short film, The Battle (2015). He has been mentored by Gavin Webber from The Farm and has toured and performed nationally and internationally. Kayah loves to connect and create and is driven by passion to be the best artist that he can be.
MASTER WORKSHOP: BEYOND GONE
DATE: 29/6/2019 3:00 – 6:00pm
VENUE: Red Shoe Dance Company (22/F, Lee Fund Centre, 31 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Aberdeen)
FEE: 450 (Full Price)
Students & Artists Discount: 300 HKD
*20% Discount if you book more than 2 workshops*
This is a workshop about why we move and how we connect. It will focus on internal states that drive action with the proposal that through movement we transcend our own self-perception and judgement, freeing the body and the mind.
In the workshop we will be working on the origin of the dancing body beyond aesthetics. What motivates us (and by that I mean all of us, not just dancers) to move? Where does the desire come from and how is it communicated?
During the choreographic and performance workshop, we will traverse many movement and theatre forms and amalgamate many techniques, including Chi Gong, contemporary dance, floor work, and improvisation, searching for an ‘inner state’ that allows us to redefine how we communicate our presence as performers and in turn examines how we define ourselves in our lives.
PERFORMANCE: THE CROSSING
Choreographed by Gavin Webber
Performed by Gavin Webber & Kayah Guenther
DATE: 28/6/2019
TIME: 7:30pm
VENUE: 5F Sheung Wan Civic Centre Theatre
The Crossing explores the desire for self expression from two different artists and the meeting point between them. Kayah, a young man with Down Syndrome, uses dance to express the way he sees the world and the way the world sees him. With the support of his mentor, choreographer Gavin Webber, Kayah wants to say he is strong, he is masculine, and he is sexual. He also wants people to know he is vulnerable and “not always happy”.
The Crossing examines the unique bond that exists between these two men and the way it has been forged through the language of dance and improvisation. It has been created by Kayah and Gavin to reflect their common interests and their differences. Together they have created a space where they can dance, laugh, wrestle, die and be reborn, become monsters, connect and collide and ultimately negotiate their mutual desire to communicate with each other and everyone else.
