Long Sentences — Rhiannon Newton

— Time travelling in the shapeshifting body of a sentence

A dance about a sentence — and a sentence that realises it is dancing. It has begun to feel its own mass and ability to move. It notices the energy it burns and senses the other forms of sentience it touches up against. It is just starting to perceive the impacts of its actions. Sensing, sentencing; it dares to consider what future these actions have in the present sentence.

A sentence sets a particular future in motion. It also orders thoughts and feelings with words. Long Sentences began as a way of describing how attention moves during a dance. It attempts to acknowledge the many presences that contribute to and author every action. It tries to feel the distant bodies and timeframes these actions are connected with. As the Earth lives out a sentence of deadly human making, Long Sentences suggests that thinking and feeling in longer threads of connection could help us to feel the sentences we are in the midst of writing with our bodies and our actions.

*** The first and second sentence evolved in remote residencies in Finland and Tasmania amongst beings inhabiting vastly different timescales. The third sentence is made live in quiet conversation with those more-than-humanly present. *** A sentence or two needed that outlines the development/presentation history of the work with names and locations (The Unconformity, Helsinki International Artist Programme).

Choreographer & Performer: Rhiannon Newton
Composer: Peter Lenaerts
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Outside Eye: Martin del Amo
Costume Designer: Aleisa Jelbart
Understudy: Emma Riches

Long Sentences has been supported by Dancehouse, Creative Australia, Create NSW, Performance Space, Critical Path, The Unconformity, Helsinki International Artist Programme, ArtScience Lab, Western Sydney University, Dance Nucleus, and Theatre and Performance Studies, the University of Sydney. In addition to credited collaborators, Long Sentences has been enabled by the creative contributions of Nikki Heywood, Vidha Saumya and Simo Kellokumpu.