Inspired by club scenes in San Francisco, Mexico, Cuba and Berlin, 'SPIN' celebrates the physical and social experience of dance parties, subcultures and the beats that bring us together.
Creator and performer Anna Seymour, dance participatory performance specialist Bec Reid, disc jockey DJ Callum Padgham, dancers Amanda Lever and Jon Clarke along with deaf hosts Luke King and Robbie Burrows send audiences spinning – literally – in this new participatory dance work, presented as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival 2018.
'SPIN' challenges the understanding of how dance and music can be experienced. It offers the audience an immersive experience, combining visual and tactile elements of DJ music from DJ Callum Padgham, sound vibration design from Russell Goldsmith, visual projections from Rhian Hinkley and dance performance from various artists.
“With 'SPIN' my desire was to blur boundaries between performers and audiences, shift perspectives about Deaf people and dance and music, to engage more with community and people and break down physical and communication barriers in society,” Anna Seymour, who was born profoundly deaf, says.
Image © Bethany Robinson
“In 2017, I performed at the International Bay Area Deaf Dance Festival in San Francisco. An experience that had a huge impact on me was the closing party. The DJ was deaf. The dance floor was packed full of deaf people. I will never forget the exhilaration of dancing in a group that was held and led by deaf people. That experience inspired me to re-create an experience for audiences in Melbourne and Australia,” Anna adds.
As a contemporary dancer, Anna has worked with Ballet Lab and KAGE as well as numerous independent choreographers and she made her choreography debut in 2016 with her Melbourne Fringe Festival dance work, 'Distraction Society'. She also co-founded The Delta Project – a Melbourne-based dance collective of deaf and hearing performers that performed in Deafferent Theatre’s first performance, 'Black Is The Colour', which earned her a Green Room nomination for Best Performer in Independent Theatre.
'SPIN' marks Anna Seymour’s return to Melbourne Fringe Festival where her first work, 'Distraction Society', played in 2016 to critical success.
