Long Sentences — Rhiannon Newton

— A dance about a sentence. A sentence that realises it is dancing

In Long Sentences a sentence senses its own body as a sentence. It notices the other sentences and forms of sentience it lives amongst. Sensing the impacts of its actions, it asks: what kind of futures do our actions in the present sentence us to?

Long Sentences plays with the double meaning of a sentence. A sentence sets a particular future in motion and also orders thoughts and feelings with words. Combining dance and text, Long Sentences pays attention to the many beings that contribute to and author the action of dancing. While time travelling in the choreography of a sentence, Newton traces the other bodies and times her actions are entangled with.

As the Earth lives out sentences of deadly human-making, Long Sentences suggests that thinking and feeling in longer threads of connection could help us sense the sentences we are in the midst of writing with our bodies and our actions.

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.