In my optimistic moments, to dance is to be in contact with a feeling of being truly present. Dance has offered me powerful experiences of connection and meaning in moments that escape words. The simple act of witnessing someone’s movement is a source of great power. 

Choreographers for ‘Everlasting Event’ Jeanine During (Everlasting: a new love) and James Batchelor (Event) reflect on the nature of improvisation in their choreographic practices and their approach to this shared evening. 

How do the journeys we take lead us to the places we’re going? How do these pathways and processes formulate both us, and where we go? What if where we’re going are not fixed zones, but distant and familiar movements, shapes, feelings, times? 

When I sat down to watch James Batchelor’s evening length piece, Shortcuts to Familiar Places, I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was winking to something ironic in the title of the performance. Even though nothing in the duration of the dance betrays a hint of irony, the word “shortcuts” in particular sticks out to me as the life and legacy of Gertrud Bodenweiser—the dance pioneer whose craft James’s inherited—is nothing but a winding path of extreme vicissitudes.

For An Evening-length Performance, which premieres at Tanz im August in summer 2021, Zander participated in the creation process initially as a performer and ultimately as an outside eye, recording reflections on the development of the work. 

In recent years James Batchelor and Collaborators have created and presented work across many different countries between Australia and Europe. This environmental audit and report is the first step in generating a better relationship to touring and acknowledging the sustainable practices already employed in our work. 

This text by Chloe Chignell is a 3 part rumination on strategies of touch within the performance Hyperspace. The text stems from ongoing conversations between James and Chloe over the past years. It is indebted to the brilliant feminist philosophers and writers through whose ideas Chloe's body and world are rendered altogether different.

I remember how much I loved my childhood desk, which had a map of the world on its surface. It was communicative and expressive, yet at the same time mysterious and romantic. Presenting the world as flat, I was endlessly curious about its edges. A map in its minimal elegance tempts our imagination about what is left out, what it does not show.

A series of Journal drawings by Annalise Rees created during the studio development process of Deepspace at Tasdance in Launceston Tasmania.