Sandra Parker Dance

Out of light is a full-length work by Choreographer/Director Sandra Parker, performed by three dancers. The work premiered in Melbourne in February/March 2009 to audience and critical acclaim, cited as "one of the best works of 2009" by the Herald Sun critic, Stephanie Glickman, and only one of two works "Commended" by M Magazine (The Sunday Age), in their end of year wrap for 2009. The work received five Green Room Award nominations 2009, in the categories of Betty Pounder Award for Choreography (Sandra Parker, the only Victorian Choreographer nominated); Concept and Realisation; Design; Best Female Dancer; and Projection Design (Theatre and Alternative/Hybrid Performance).

Out of light is about the ephemeral and transitory nature of theatre. In Out of light dance is treated as memory, partial and fragmentary. The work concentrates on the traces left behind when a performance is over: the empty theatre, the sensation of dance in the body of the dancer, the images left in the mind of the audience. Out of light not only points to nostalgia and history; it takes traditional theatrical notions and prises them apart to deconstruct and disrupt pre-conceived notions of what we expect of dance.

For the three protagonists in Out of light, performance is a daydream, an imagining, a physical memory buried deep in the body. The choreographic vocabulary is constructed as a 'play' on a dance once known, but not fully remembered. Traces and fragments of recognisable, iconic dance vocabulary and stylistic references flow through the choreographic material in an imagined re-enactment. Inside of this wistful and seemingly nostalgic re-enactment, the choreography subverts romanticism and history by exposing the subjective, interior thoughts and emotions of the dancer and the hidden nuances of performance: success, fear of failure, the obsession with getting it right; endless rehearsal and re-rehearsals.

Click here to see Out of Light on Vimeo