Pictures & Ghosts gathers the recollections and traces of a dance. From stark photographic memory to a distant sense of nostalgia, performer Arabella Frahn-Starkie draws upon the relationship between dance, and the means of documenting and archiving performance through video, photography, and notation.

The documentation floods across multiple screens creating silhouettes and visual obstructions, and layers the use of analog and digital technology. Arabella’s marking, blurring and overwriting of the documentation, works to undercut the accuracy and solidity of the documentation, giving her tactile control of the images of herself as she reasserts her authorship over her visual reproduction.

In Pictures & Ghosts, Arabella invites audiences into her process of retracing a dance that may otherwise have sunk into her bodily memory, never to be seen again. The performance is a contemplation on the possibilities and pitfalls of the archiving of dance, and for Arabella, it is a reminder that no time spent dancing is inconsequential.

Arabella would like to wholeheartedly thank Molly, Meg, Trudi, Bonita, Caroline, Gill, Oonagh, Eleanor, Platform Arts, the Dancehouse team, Dad, Hillary, Siobhan (Murphy and McKenna), Shian, Sarah, Jaslyn, and dearest Robert for their contributions to this work.

Creative team:

Performer and Choreographer: Arabella Frahn-Starkie

Photographer: Trudi Treble

Director: Meg Duncan

Cinematographer: Bonita Carzino

Composer: Robert Downie

All images: Trudi Treble

Arabella Frahn-Starkie is a dance artist, choreographer and 2021 Platform LAB alumna. She has performed in and made works for theatres, galleries, clubs, pubs, parks, auditoriums, stairwells, studios and tiny shop windows. Arabella believes that at the junction of the artwork, audience and artist, is a sentient and volatile body.