Baby Girl

After the success of Baby Girl's premiere at Mona Foma 2023, Launceston audiences can get up close and intimate with Amber McCartney's newest solo.

Baby Girl is a performance of a persona whose physicality slides on a spectrum of her original body’s memories and her new being. This work investigates physicality, which involves emptying the body of familiarity to refill it with someone or something disturbingly otherworldly. 

"Baby Girl is disquieting, remarkable and impressively physical. It’s also the kind of work that I would not have actively sought out if it hadn’t been programmed as part of the Mona Foma festival. Now I can’t wait to see what McCartney does next." - Elizabeth Flux, The Sydney Morning Herald.

"Amber McCartney writhed on the Nolan Gallery’s floor as a larval approximation of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers."- Nick Buckley, NME

"Baby Girl, the sole performer – Amber McCartney – has the audience’s rapt attention as she writhes, contorts and transforms.”- Marcus Teague, Broadsheet.

CREATIVE TEAM
CHOREOGRAPHER/PERFORMER: Amber McCartney
COSTUME DESIGNER: Geoffrey Watson
SOUND DESIGNER: Makeda Zucco
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Adam Wheeler
PRODUCER: Emma Porteus

Photo by Gabriel Comerford. Image description: Amber McCartney lays on the ground all in pink with her right fist in the eye hole of a large pink foam helmet.

ABOUT AMBER McCARTNEY
Amber is a Naarm/Melbourne-based dancer and choreographer. Her practice incorporates prosthetics, mask-making, film and practical special effects to create new augmented bodies foreign to both the performer and viewer.

Amber has worked extensively with Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc and is a Creative Associate of Tasdance. In 2022 she was honoured to receive a Chloe Munro Fellowship from Lucy Guerin Inc., won a 2022 Green Room Award for Best Performer in Prue Lang’s Project F and was a finalist for The Australian Ballet/Telstra Emerging Choreographer.

In 2020, Amber received Solitude 1, Chunky Move’s home-based residency program funded by the Tanja Liedtke Foundation and created her film ‘Softtrap’ for the 2021 Activators program.

She has presented solo work for Tasdance, Lucy Guerin Inc’s ‘Pieces’ and ‘Now Pieces’, Dancehouse. Amber has enjoyed performing for Dancenorth and Antony Hamilton Projects as well as independent choreographers and multidisciplinary artists; Jenni Large, Prue Lang, Jo Lloyd, James Batchelor, Su Huiyu, Kyall Shanks, Jonathan Homsey and Niharika Senapati.

Assembly 197 is a heritage building that isn't wheelchair accessible. Assembly 197 take inclusion and accessibility very seriously and is working towards making our space available to all. If you would like to discuss this matter with us further, please contact Adam and Emma at connect@assembly197.com