A Kind Tone

New Zealand School Of Dance - Rehearsal Trailer

Idea:

‘A Kind Tone’ is a short contemporary dance work that was originally created with the students at The New Zealand School of Dance for their graduation season in 2022. We (Tyler and Joshua) wish to develop the ideas and movement that was originally created with the students into a duet between both of us under our company Threading Frames.

‘A Kind Tone’ originated from the inspiration of sculptures. In particular we are inspired by Francis Upritchard’s work who is a New Zealand born artist. We were curious about how we could bring these sculptures to life through bodies and contemporary dance. The work focuses on the idea of unravelling layers of oneself. In the original work, we see the performers confined to certain parameters, in turn following their curiosity and urge to develop their situation. This group of women are ultimately exploring what it means to be an individual with the support of a community. 

We feel as though there is an opportunity to develop this work and want to revisit ideas as well as finding what other possibilities there are within this provocation. We would love to use the 3 weeks residency for myself and Joshua to experiment with new ideas and discover the movement vocabulary that associates with this work within a dance duet. We use improvisation as a tool to bring ideas to light when creating our work, in particular we enjoy playing with the use of imagery that can be seen below, using it as a guide to choreograph our work.

Our work always revolves around world building, developing concepts within either a natural or structured environment to then see how or what dance movement might exist within these worlds. This interest in world building springs from our history working as dancers and choreographers within the live theatre contemporary dance scene. Allowing the environments to completely influence the direction of each work has helped us create diverse dance work. 

The 3 weeks residency will help Joshua and I achieve an in-depth understanding of what this duet can entail with the hopes to perform this duet in the future.