Gallery

Heart of Gold Project 4. Performance 1 - Primavera at the MCA 2008 -by Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont

Heart of Gold Project 4, Performance 1 was a performance work devised specifically for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney to coincide with the opening of the prestigious 'Primavera' exhibition. It was presented to MCA audiences over three nights (20, 21, 24th September 2008) and was designed as an accompaniment to, and a follow up of our performance/film work Heart of Gold Project 4, An Excerpt from 'Le Triomphe De L'Amour,' which is showing at the same exhibition.

The performance details the rise and fall of the Golden Heart Gang, leading directly to the start of the film work where the last sister faces the pursuing police officer. Drawing choreography from the work of Jerome Robbins in the musical West Side Story, as well as referencing The Red Detachment of Woman, we used a mixture of ballet, contemporary and jazz dance styles to tell the story.

Creating continuity between the film and this performance, Chloe Potter and Bryony Humphreys agreed to reprise their roles as the police officer and the last Golden Heart sister. The wonderful Sydney additions to this dance group, playing the sisters from the Golden Heart Gang were Katy Green, Elle-May Patterson and Bryony Tesoriero.
We commissioned Ash Gibson Greig, a well known Perth-based composer and recent collaborator, to create music to match the choreography and add emotional impact to the story. Gibson Greig composed the music for the original performance/film work and took the style used further; referencing the dynamic score written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim for West Side Story.

This dance work is essentially a playful yet assertive revision of gender politics and traditional cultural propaganda, much like our other Heart of Gold Projects, but it also reveals our love of storytelling and its tropes.
Photography: Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont