TAFE SA’s most experienced dance students will be showcasing their talents as choreographers and performers in Ripdrag and Ruminate during the Adelaide Fringe.
Ripdrag and Ruminate is a program of seven original works, created and performed by students who are in their final year of the Bachelor of Creative Arts – Dance, a dual award offered by TAFE SA and Flinders University.
The production is a major creative collaboration which sees students work in pairs, based on mutual interests or a shared concept, to choreograph dance works which are performed by their peers.
Student Zachary Woods describes working on Ripdrag and Ruminate as a “a trial run for the industry”.
“If you want to go into the industry and become a choreographer or a producer or director, and you want to make works, you have the opportunity to do that in Ripdrag and in the Fringe, which is amazing in itself, and then we have all this experience behind us,” he says.
Zach and fellow student Ella Dixon have co-created a dance piece based around sleep paralysis and nightmares, and the effects they have on the body, with three dancers performing in a “nightmare state”.
“We’ve taken away from the human form, so they’re more about entities and darkness in the space, rather than being humans in the space,” Zach says.
Ella says the collaborative process of Ripdrag and Ruminate has given her confidence in her ideas and ability as a choreographer.
“We get so excited to see other people perform the work we’ve created. You have to take a step back and trust the dancers to work with the ideas we’ve given them, and it’s so exciting to watch them perform the work,” she says.
Classmates Bonnie Traeger and Poppy Anthoney are also collaborating on a dance work and agree there is much to gain from the choreographic process.
“Finding how to be really clear, to give instructions to the dancers to create or get some sort of feeling or theme or shape together is challenging but when you see a phrase come together it’s so rewarding,” Poppy says.
The pair’s dance piece has a broad theme of ‘life’s energy’ and draws on influences from a cellular level to “almost an outer body, worldly view”.
Both agree there are “endless benefits” in participating in Ripdrag and Ruminate.
“In Adelaide, we’ve got a lot of independent artists in dance and one of their main times of focus is the Fringe, so getting comfortable in that space while still training is a great opportunity,” Bonnie says.
Poppy: “It’s also a bit like being chucked in the deep end because we’re all doing our own music, lighting, choreography, dancing in other works, timetabling, we have responsibilities and we have to schedule all of that.”
“I think it’s also life lessons about being an artist and it’s a positive thing, it makes you realise you can do it.”
Ripdrag and Ruminate will be performed at the Stables, AC Arts, on Thursday and Friday, March 14 and 15, at 1pm and 7pm. Tickets through Adelaide Fringe.
Photo by Sofia Calado