Queen Street Studio blog

This week we caught up with one of our favourite QSS-Residents Martin del Amo to talk about Anatomy of an Afternoon, on until Monday 16 January at the Sydney Opera House for the Sydney Festival.

Tell us about Anatomy of an Afternoon. How did you come to work with solo dancer Paul White? 

Anatomy of an Afternoon takes its inspiration from Vaslav Nijinsky’s The Afternoon of a Faun. This seminal dance piece was highly controversial when it first premiered in 1912, partly because of its overtly sexual nature for its time but also because it so radically rejected any classical formalism associated with the ballet tradition. While using the Nijinsky original as a conceptual springboard, Anatomy of an Afternoon at the same time marks somewhat of a departure as it shifts the focus away from the faun character and seeks to physically capture the elusive nature of the afternoon.

Paul and I had known each other socially for a few years and I’ve always been an admirer of his work. Paul is primarily known for his incredible dancing skills and charismatic performance style but he is also a much sought after artistic collaborator, having forged ongoing creative partnerships with several choreographers. He is fearless when it comes to choreographic research and always up for challenging himself artistically. I felt he was the ideal collaborator for this project and I asked him if he was interested in coming onboard. Luckily he said yes …

What’s it like to have a show in the Sydney Festival? Have you been involved in Festival productions before?

I feel it’s really special to be able to premiere Anatomy of an Afternoon at the Sydney Festival. In the last few years, the Festival rarely programmed productions by independent local artists. As someone living and working in Sydney, I’ve always thought that was a great shame. That’s different with this year’s festival, where a number of new works by local artists is represented. And I’m very excited to be part of that mix.

The only other Festival event I have been involved in was the 2009 First Night where I performed with The Fondue Set as part of a massive dance routine on a scaffold structure at Martin Place. I was a dance captain — the only time I’ve ever been a dance captain.

How did you begin your career as a dancer and now choreographer? Do you prefer one role over the other, or are they intertwined?

I’m originally from Germany and I started dancing over there. One of the choreographers I worked with in the mid-Nineties was Sydney-based choreographer Tess de Quincey. I first came to Sydney in 1996, initially with the sole purpose of continuing my work with Tess. I soon after started making my own work and eventually based myself here in 2002.

For many years I mainly worked as a solo artist, creating dance pieces that I would both choreograph and perform. In recent years, I have shifted my practice to increasingly working with other performers both in group and solo contexts. As much as I enjoy blending the roles of choreographer and dancer in my solo work, I am also very happy when I get to concentrate purely on the role of choreographer and director. I love working with other performers and find it exciting to draw on their input when creating a work.

What inspires you? 

It’s often the tension between two things that seem contradictory at first glance. In the case of Anatomy of an Afternoon, I was interested in trying out something I had never done before. I had never used an existing piece as inspiration for a new creation. I had never worked with a dancer of Paul’s calibre. And I had never assembled an artistic team that only included collaborators with whom I never worked with before. At the same time, I wanted to consolidate the choreographic language I have been developing for many years and further explore conceptual ideas I’ve been playing with for a while. This mix between the intimately familiar and the completely unknown has been a never-ceasing source of inspiration for me while working on Anatomy of an Afternoon.

Where else can we see you / your work during 2012? 

There are several projects I will be working on in 2012, they are all at different stages of development. One is a piece called Just Add Water designed as a solo for dance artist Anton. Another is a full-length duet with dancer/choreographer Julie-Anne Long – The Night Is Young And We Are Not (Julie-Anne & Martin had a residency at QSS in 2011 to begin development on the piece). I will also continue developing pieces for my ongoing choreographic project, Slow Dances For Fast Times. Once completed, it will consist of 12 short solos performed by a diverse range of dancers from distinctive cultural and artistic backgrounds, of different ages and from different States.

So yes, it looks as if 2012 is going to be more of a ‘development year’ than a ‘presentation year’. Apart from Anatomy of an Afternoon of course …

Click here if you would like more information about Anatomy of an Afternoon.