SEARCHLIGHT

FOOD CHAIN | Gavin Webber & Grayson Millwood

Venue: Piano Bar
When: Thursday 25 February 03:45 PM - 04:45 PM
Genre: Dance

Food Chain is a new dance theatre work exploring animality, sex, voyeurism, performance and power.

Food Chain begins in a naïve forest. Stuffed animals line the walls and a huge tree dominates the space. Bears are top of the food chain. They lure in humans with food, the smell of a dead body, the tape recording of a baby crying, with the desire to experiment on them; firstly for food and then with the desire of watching them sexually active.

They are bears and also men in bear suits. Clumsy, threatening, cute and ultimately alien. This is David Attenborough turned on its head, where the animals are the voyeurs of human behaviours.

The work shifts into theatrical Island of Doctor Moreau. A woman couples with a bear head and then becomes half human, half bear. Sleeping bags turn into leaches and a tent into a spider. Everything comes to life and finally the men emerge from their bear suits, sweaty and naked, combing their hair and trying to blend in with cheap human suits. This moment marks the transition from the natural food chain into a social one. A man turns into a lion and a pack of people into gazelles. He hunts the weakest, takes him down, bites his neck and rummages in his clothes, stealing from him. The final transition is from the social food chain into a theatrical one. The two men who were bears and then uncomfortable humans become now the directors of the work.

Gavin Webber and Grayson Millwood
Gavin and Grayson have been working together creating extraordinary dance theatre since their days with Meryl Tankard ADT in the early nineties. They have both separately worked for prestigious European dance theatre companies, Gavin for Ultima Vez and Grayson with Sasha Waltz and Guests. They continued to try to work together, finding time to make short films and when Gavin returned to Australia they founded Splintergroup with other Meryl Tankard dancers Vincent Crowley, Sarah-Jayne Howard and Michelle Ryan. Splintergroup produced the works lawn and roadkill, both of which have toured extensively throughout Australia, Germany, and Singapore. Lawn opened the 2008 Tanzplattform and roadkill is booked for a Canadian tour at the beginning of 2010.

Gavin was Artistic Director of Dancenorth in Queensland from 2005 to the beginning of 2009. Grayson worked on both Nightcafe and Remember Me with Gavin during this time. Grayson has also produced his own work Edgar that has toured in Europe and is being commissioned by Pankow to make a children’s performance later in 2009.

Food Chain was commisioned by Physical Virus Collective in Freiburg and has so far performed in Freiburg and Heidelberg.

Gavin and Grayson continue to work together and plan to draw all the different strands of work they do under a common goal. It is their long working history and friendship combined with some very different influences that have contributed to a unique working relationship between these artists.