Live in Conversation

With Ea Sola, the choreographer of 'The White Body', and with Lemi Ponifasio, choreographer of 'Tempest: Without a Body'.

Both mention staging as an apparatus to text.
Both stress the need for Emergency.

Ea Sola:
Ea Sola believes there is no magic of existence. She sees the person a mystery, she works with the mind and then translates words into bodily motion. She uses dance as a text, a way to express words, thoughts, ideas. She also sees the body as a poetic expression.

Lemi Ponifasio:
Lemi sees dance as a form of activism. He asks the audience why? He says Tempest expresses fragility and power – depicting the process of powerful life change.

Ea Sola:
Ea Sola depicts memory through the body. She is not concerned with personal memory but of collective memory – the memory we all share through war and international relations.
The body is valuable and political. Eliminate violence by shifting one’s perspective – dissociating from the event and observing. How can we bring ourselves closer together? She says her work is a collective work, of togetherness.

Lemi Ponifasio:
He says his work is about sharing and collaboration. He wants to find out who you are. The public viewed Tama Iti – whom performed and spoke during the piece – as a monster, their perspective was one-sided because of how the media portrays him. Tama Iti is a person like everyone else. He is trying to live his life and do what he thinks is right. He is portrayed in all his vulnerability and presence on the theatre stage.
Lemi believes theatre should not be escapism, theatre is a way to understand existence and to acknowledge public fears. He sees theatre as a public ceremony – he says that there is a lack of focus on public concerns in most ceremonial events. The audience as a community: theatre as a way to contemplate time – to reconstitute humanity. Contemporary dance is moments in life.

Ea Sola:
She would like the audience to think and feel, to understand and feel the other. To take consciousness, become aware of youth culture in its current state of consumerism and greed.
She feels it is our responsibility as a collective to observe ourselves.
She is concerned with the modern world – the illusion of freedom, the democratic illusion of freedom and protection. She asks us “is it like that?”
The System, built by European people who stand for freedom – yet they take cheap labour from Asian countries. Is this democracy?

Lemi Ponifasio:
He asserts that it is not democratic to bludge off other countries.
Lemi mentions that the fatal condition of commercial art is that it doesn’t acknowledge reality, that art which focuses on commerciality is fashion and trend based. He encourages us to recognise our cultural roots and to share beauty.