What happens if ‘A Sun Dance’ has no sun? Artist Rochelle Haley and curator Melanie Stidolph on restaging in the UK
StoriesSep 23, 2024
Artist Rochelle Haley created durational performance A Sun Dance in response to the distinctive, brutalist architecture of the National Gallery of Australia, where it premiered in February 2024.
In collaboration with curator Melanie Stidolph, Haley has now restaged A Sun Dance at Tate St Ives in the UK, with Australian choreographer and dancer Ivey Wawn; Australian composer and musician Megan Alice Clune; dancer Alice Heyward; and UK dancers Kyra Norman, Winona Guy, and Talia Sealey.
We chatted with them about the challenges in restaging a site-responsive work in a different space, what the audience’s reactions have been, and what happens if there’s no sun shining on performance day.
A Sun Dance. Dancer: Ivey Wawn. Photo: Steve Tanner
Creative Australia: A Sun Dance was created specifically for the architecture of the NGA. What have been the challenges in translating that to a different space?
Rochelle: “From the outset, I had quite a clear idea that the work would be composed in a way that it is adaptable. It’s quite responsive, not just to the concrete elements of the architecture, but also the changing elements of the weather and movement in time and space. The geometries in the architectural design of the National Gallery building were reflected in some of the choreographic pattern making – the shapes, in other words – that the dancers make with their bodies. So adapting it to another site is a challenge, but it’s also about, in some ways, reading the building for the geometries present.
“The Tate St Ives is a very circular building. The National Gallery of Australia has that foundational kind of triangular shape – it often described as a brutalist piece of architecture – which the architect, Colin Madigan, didn’t agree with – but it does have a very modernist, concrete, large scale, dramatic window thing going on, with very present triangular shapes in the ceiling throughout, a tri-grid of triangular shapes. It’s been interesting, because translating the work to Tate St Ives with choreographer Ivey Wawn has meant that the architecture draws out the circularity in a lot of the choreography and in the overall composition and structure of the work.”
Creative Australia: Was the architecture of Tate St Ives a factor in choosing to exhibit there?
Rochelle: “Partly. A few things came into place. St Ives is very famous for its light. People come here for the sunlight and it is very beautiful and very clear and distinct. It’s a kind of ever-present texture to this place that feels quite different, especially coming from London on a five-hour train. Suddenly the atmosphere is different. It’s really crystal clear and there’s a particular colour palette to the light here.
“We were thinking more deeply about what it means to translate a choreographic work between places and where would be an appropriate site for this particular work.
“It really is the light of St Ives and the uniqueness of this architecture that makes this museum and gallery space really an excellent way to experiment with the adaptability of A Sun Dance.”
Creative Australia: What’s it been like working with a different team of dancers and a different crew?
Rochelle: “Really beautiful. One of the things that we had hoped to do is connect the work to the local community here and to start thinking ahead about what dance in the museum might mean for this local region. Through (curator) Melanie Stidolph, I was connected with Kyra Norman, one of the dancers who will perform, a local choreographer and dancer with an established career in the community here. Kyra very kindly offered up some of her personal networks as a short list. It was really important to me to think about existing relationships, people who had worked together before, who already have that rapport and familiarity and understanding and trust between them. These local UK dancers joined Ivey and Megan from the original cast, along with Alice, a Berlin-based dancer well known to the Australian team.”
A Sun Dance. Dancer: Ivey Wawn. Photo: Steve Tanner
“Part of what we’re doing here is not plonking an artwork somewhere else on the globe and just starting afresh. It’s about thinking about the way that the social networks hold a choreographic work in the first place. And the success, I think, in re-staging, relocating, translating the work elsewhere is to build on those social networks and to extend the social networks through an overlapping, so the people really matter.”
Melanie: “What’s so amazing is that we’ve been able to draw in all these connections through Kyra’s work, and we can see the interest that it’s generated here. Even just anecdotally in the town, people were saying that they’re coming to see it. It’s a very busy time, being St Ives September Festival. It’s lovely to have these moments of gathering together, which is quite distinct from having an ongoing exhibition programme. It’s like, you all have to come now and witness this.
“There are things that we’re all experiencing in the atmosphere, and our light is not as reliable as yours. We don’t quite know what we’re going to get [at the performance], but what I can absolutely witness is this group of people coming together and what that means. We are watching a performance, but we’re also watching a group of people who are working very closely together and really enjoying that. There’s something really lovely in that. Yes, hopefully something naturally builds over time with the dance community.
Creative Australia: I imagine it’s a little bit nerve wracking hosting a piece that is so dependent on the weather?
Rochelle: “When we don’t have the weather, we are still experiencing the sun’s rays on our skin.
“In fact, there’s something a little bit more urgent about this work when the weather’s bad.”
“Because part of what the work does is really draw our attention to our connection to the natural light that we have, and pulls and stretches it and reaches for it a little more. So in some ways, the dance kind of brings more light.”
Melanie: “And you literally have bought more light in. Same with the NGA. Around the building, there are arrangements made so that in Gallery One, we’ve been able to open the shutters in the roof space, which normally we wouldn’t do because there are very sensitive works in there. In agreement with conservation, those works are temporarily shaded, while we can let the light into everything else. That’s really lovely, to let the light in.”
When you staged it at the NGA, what were the audience reactions, and did you have people stumble upon it randomly when they just happened to be visiting?
Rochelle: “We had this wonderful, dedicated audience who came with us in the morning and stuck with us for most of the day, who were there specifically for the performance. But we also, of course, had lots of people who had no idea that it would be happening and who chanced upon the performance. And because the performance is quite concentrated with all five dancers in one place sometimes, and then quite dispersed at other times with chance-based elements, even if you want to watch the whole thing, you can’t. It comes and goes and it’s quite discoverable. There’s no right way to grab it all and to sit down and watch it.
“I had a lot of very positive feedback about the way that it changed people’s perception and experience of the architecture and the light. That they saw the building differently, they felt the building differently, which is nice to hear.”
Melanie: “It operates as its own organism within the gallery, and we get to witness it. And also, there’s no fourth wall. The [audience] might make eye contact with [the performers], they might laugh amongst themselves, they might do a time check, they might suddenly say, “Oh, we’re turning around. We’re going to go over here because there’s an opportunity.” So yeah, it’s alive. It’s a live process in the museum, and that’s just lovely.”
