Dancehouse and Melbourne Festival Present DANCE TERRITORIES

Dance Territories, Dancehouse's biennial program of boundary-pushing contemporary choreography, returns to the Melbourne Festival in October, presenting live installations by Australian artist Sarah-Jane Norman together with the acclaimed performance The Shout by Algerian-French choreographer Nacera Belaza. The Australian premiere double bill questions where the borderlines between body and place exist. It asks, how are these sites impacted by migration, circulation, dis-location and invasion? And how do they impact our personal and cultural identities?

Dance Territories is a curated program that pairs up an independent local with a recognised international artist to explore the subtle connections ignited when their work collides. It mirrors the circulation of ideas and of moving bodies, brings forth dialogues of cultural identities, and allows audiences to experience the multiple ways ideas are explored by Australian and International Artists.

Presenting two live art installations from Unsettling Suites - The River's Children and Take this for it is my body - Sarah-Jane Norman dissects the impact Australia's colonial history has had on her own body, offering up incisive moments that unsettle the safety of historical distance through a combination of sculpture, installation and performance works. Exploring her dual Aboriginal and British heritage, Norman's work traverses artforms, inviting audiences to examine the affects of first contact and the ongoing conflict between Australia's Indigenous people and their colonisers. A cross-disciplinary artist and writer, Norman's practice traverses performance, installation, sculpture, text, video and sound. She has presented widely, including at Venice International Performance Week, Spill Festival of Live Art (UK), Next Wave and the Edinburgh Festival. She currently divides her time between Berlin and regional NSW.

Nacera Belaza's seminal work The Shout is a duet performed by Belaza and her sister that observes the intersection of globalisation and sacred ritual. In Belaza's words, "the scream is when the anchor does not let go." Born in Algeria, Belaza has lived in France since age five. A self-taught interpreter, she formed her own Dance Company in 1989 and has developed a practice founded upon an awareness of the body, of space and of the emptiness inside herself. Nacera Belaza's Company presents internationally and regularly performs at prestigious venues and festivals such as the Festival Montpellier Danse, the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, the Festival d'Avignon, and the Biennale de la danse de Lyon.

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