What’s Actually Happening
From a long nap[vii] wake Alice Will Caroline, in What’s Actually Happening, to the third circle of Hell, and a state of an ever-mutating emergency. Throw on what’s to hand — gold hot pants, a long black coat, long black gloves, a house plant — and go. What do we do now? What can be done? Some, like Dante Alighieri’s canto VI from The Divine Comedy, “No more his bed he leaves, Ere the last angel-trumpet blow”. As Caroline Meaden collects herself and dons the attire, tone, and mannerisms of the quintessential art gallery guide, comfort is found. Meaden could be describing the inferno within Giotto, Jan van Eyck, or Fra Angelico’s The Last Judgement with its demons in pursuit, breaking mortal bones. Or the crimson glare of Cerberus. She could be describing the greed of present day. As Alice Will Caroline tell it, with their talk of serpents like ropes at your ankles, these strange visions are familiar places, but they’re funny too.
- Gracia Harby for Fjord Review
What’s Actually Happening was developed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns, a period when we as a collective were negotiating considerable uncertainty.
Commissioned for the 2022 Keir Choreographic Award, the work explores the absurdity of making art, maintaining relationships and attempting to act meaningfully in a world seemingly trapped in a perpetual state of emergency.
Grand narratives of civilisation, morality and apocalypse are brought into confrontation with the ordinary pressures and frustrations of being human. The performance culminated in an extended monologue in the manner of an art-gallery guide. Describing an imagined painting of Last Judgement, the monologue transformed God into an exhausted woman, more preoccupied with having left her sick baby at home than with the supposedly momentous business of divine judgement.
CREATIVE TEAM
Choreography and Performance: Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden and William McBride
Sound Composition: Jeremy Meaden
Lighting Design: Adelaide Harney
Costume design: Alice Will Caroline with borrowed items from Shian Law and Phillip Adams
Set: Alice Dixon and Ross Dixon
DOCUMENTATION
Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti
Video: Cobie Orger
Link to Video
Video interview with Alice Will Caroline
Interview with Clair Summers for Performance Review
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
Commissioned for the Keir Choreographic Award 2022
Dancehouse, Melbourne, 23—25 June 2022
Carriageworks, Sydney, 30 June—2 July
The Keir Choreographic Award is a partnership between Dancehouse, The Keir Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts, with presenting partner Carriageworks
