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Happy Hour #20: THE BUDGET ​

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ReadyMade Works is excited to announce Happy Hour #20 :The BUDGET.

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Happy Hour #20 is curated by Lisa Maris McDonell who has reimagined this iteration of Happy Hour as the third stage development of her ongoing project, The BUDGET.

Lisa - "This Happy Hour I'm bringing a handful of Sydney's most respected and experienced artists out from behind their desks (where they work in order to survive and also support our ever more fragile dance community) for a new work development that doubles as a performance. The BUDGET does just as our funding overlords would like us to do and places The BUDGET at the centre of creative output. The BUDGET looks at an artist’s relationship to money in a world that requires everything to have a dollar value.

I'm asking myself a few questions as I enter this stage of development, including;

• How can I creatively work within the budget that I've been given by ReadyMade while completing an entire stage of development for this project AND provide an enjoyable evening out for our audience, while making important statements and sticking to the rules I've made to contain the project?

• Why do mature dance artists in Australia (often female) end up putting their choreographic practices aside to work behind a desk?

• Should I be doing that (working behind a desk) instead of this (making more dances)?

• What if Australia got to see their choreographers work over a lifetime making dance, like sometimes happens in other places?"

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Performers: Jane McKernan, Maya Gavish, Emma Saunders, Lizzie Thomson, + others TBA. 

Live projection: Martin Fox

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Dates: Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th December
Time: 6pm
Tickets: $15
 

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With limited seats available, you don't want to miss out – grab your tickets now!

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Happy Hour is supported by the NSW government through Create NSW

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Image Credit: Lisa Maris McDonell

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Happy Hour is ReadyMade Works' signature short works program showcasing the extraordinary practices of Sydney's independent dance artists. Initiated by Linda Luke and Samantha Chester in 2016, Happy Hour is the platform for encountering the diverse and uncompromising work being made by local dance artists.

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CURATOR: Lisa Maris McDonell

Bio: Lisa has been creating and presenting performance and video works in various contexts since 1996 in Australia and internationally. She spent quite a while at a desk in the early 2000's when she worked as Course Coordinator and in other roles at NAISDA Dance College. Upon leaving NAISDA to pursue a more physically active role in the dance community she promptly fell pregnant with the first of her three children.

In 2020 Lisa began presenting her work under the title Proper Motion, consequently collaborating with a range of South Coast and international artists on a number of projects of varying scale. Lisa has never spent so much (often wasted) time behind a desk since really investing energy into an independent practice that involves collaboration with other artists.

Lisa regularly teaches workshops and classes and creates performances for professional and pre-professional dancers and actors. Teaching credits include the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney Dance Company, Australasian Dance Collective, NAISDA Dance College, University of Wollongong, Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa (Ireland) and Ankara State Conservatory (Turkey) amongst many others. She currently teaches the full-time students of Joanne Grace School of Dance and across Sydney Dance Company’s various programs. Many of these positions have offered a good balance between studio and desk time, with the weight leaning heavily toward studio time.

As a mature, independent artist Lisa regularly feels the magnetic pull that calls her back toward an official administrative job behind a desk in the arts. While she still resists that pull, she often questions whether she would be better off surrendering to it, because at least she would be earning some kind of  an income.

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ARTISTS:

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Jane McKernan

Bio: Jane McKernan first started sitting at desks when she was at school, and this practice alongside ballet classes and the occasional volleyball game became her foremost physical education. Jane’s first professional engagement as a desk-sitter was at the University of Sydney where she sat at an empty desk reviewing student enrolment forms. Since then, Jane has sat at desks at Performance Space, Performing Lines, UNSW, the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and in her current role as director of ReadyMade Works. Her favourite desk role was opposite colleague Phil Sanger at NSCD where the computer screens between them were pushed to a jaunty angle, and they could freely converse while still managing the demands of their roles. Between desk jobs, Jane has choreographed and performed as a member of The Fondue Set and in her own work, winning the KCA audience choice prize in 2015. Her work has been presented at  Sydney Opera House, Performance Space, Dancehouse and Artshouse. 

Maya Gavish

Bio: Maya Gavish has spent more than two decades moving between the studio, the stage, and perhaps most rigorously—the desk. A dancer, educator, researcher, producer, and director, she has navigated every corner of the field with curiosity and a deep passion for all things dance. Her academic adventures include a thesis on choremusical relations and a doctorate investigating the decision-making processes of some of Australia’s most influential choreographers.

As a performer, Maya has inhabited a striking range of worlds: she portrayed Kundri in the opera Parsifal; danced on sand adorned in ocean-rescued plastics for Sculpture by the Sea; and used her best shimmy and shakes as a company member of Jazz Plus (Israel). Most recently, she has taken great delight in portraying Sophia Petrillo in the stage version of The Golden Girls— a casting she notes is mildly confronting in terms of age implications.

These days, Maya channels her experience into nurturing the next generation of artists as Head of Dance for the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA)- Bachelor of Dance program. With equal parts rigor and artistry, she brings her off-desk presence to The Budget.

Lizzie Thomson 

Bio: Lizzie Thomson works in the performing arts as a dance artist, writer, sessional lecturer and producer. She has presented work at Carriageworks, Performance Space, Art Gallery of NSW, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Murray Art Museum Albury,
Critical Path, ReadyMade Works, Omeo Dance Studio, ACO Air Hong Kong, SODA Universität der Kunste (Berlin), SÍM (Iceland) and ABC Arts Online. Her practice explores idiosyncratic forms of embodiment, soft spectatorship, and scores of
attention. Lizzie has performed extensively throughout Australia and internationally for over two decades, collaborating with numerous acclaimed artists including Rosalind Crisp, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Mette Edvardsen, Janet Laurence, Angela
Goh, Marina Abramovic and Joan Jonas. Lizzie’s writing has been published in books including The Gesture of Writing: a project by Mette Edvardsen; In Perpetuity: a project by Ivey Wawn; Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine: a project by Mette Edvardsen; and Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice, as well as in several journals, exhibition catalogues and bespoke publications. She has guest edited journal issues on dance for Runway Australian Experimental Art (Issue #36 DANCE) and for Critical Path’s Critical Dialogues (Issue #9 DANCE/VISUAL/ART. Lizzie is currently the producer of Critical Path – Australia’s leading centre for choreographic research and development. Lizzie has lived and worked on unceded Wangal and Gadigal country since 1998.

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Emma Saunders

Bio: Emma’s first official desk job was at Campbeltown arts centre where she created the role of dance curator with Lisa havilah. A desk job she set up with others in mind to continue to enjoy and learn those important desk job/survival skills. She curated up a goddam storm of local, national and international projects and tried to give as many artists as she could from all walks of life a leg up. 

Her next desk job was working in Cultural Development for Wollongong council where she created a very rewarding project throughout Covid with heaps of locals. Emma thought she might get that job for the long term but missed out cos she didn’t have enough council experience. Thats cos she was busy making art and becoming the artist they were going to need in times like right now (but that now she can’t do cos she doesn’t have time cos she has a different desk job to support this chapter of her life  

Her latest desk job (where she never sits down) is in Education as a teacher at Keira high school where she teaches maths, cooking, woodwork, English, creative arts, and sewing is hard work - no working from home, but instead showing up every day to take roll call of everyone else’s kids, no rolling around the floor, no time to herself at all, no making brekky for her kids, no time for pick ups after school, no making work that ends up in brilliant, big performative outcomes for all, no respect for what she knows on a deeper level with dance, or her experience,  and very rarely anything artistic. 

But!!! When it comes to the budget she is paid for 52 weeks of the year, sick days and all holidays that fit in with being a human and a mother, can afford a roof over their heads (5 in fact cos they have to keep moving cos they’re still renting at 50 cos she’s never earnt enough or had family wealth to get a deposit or buy anything. Fun fact- Emma is moving this very weekend!), formal dresses, school camps, kids activities, Duke of Edinburgh, and a million other costs that come with parenting and life. She has a direct community of teachers she sees every day and all of whom acknowledge the good work they all do on a regular basis. Emma is using every skill she has to bring what she knows to this job-except actual dancing  - and she’s grateful her mum suggested she complete her 1 year dip Ed at the end of her dance degree in case she might need it later when she hits new chapters of her life that aren’t all around dancing. 

And also she still has one day a week set aside for all things Dance where she still manages to maintain her We Are Company (just!) in residence at Critical Path and still work as an artist on lots of good projects. Punching out Encounter for Syd Fest with 16 amazing dancers - all of whom she keeps in touch with was a highlight. As well as making so many brilliant works with The Fondue Set.  So all is well. But perhaps Emma has had to learn that a dance practice is deeper than dancing. And life isn’t what you do, it’s who you are. 

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Martin Fox

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