Queen Victoria Gardens

Created and performed by Deanne Butterworth & Jo Lloyd 

A pair of dancers inhabit the pavilion to disrupt familiar narratives and embody the light and dark symbolism of swans.

Celebrated performers Deanne Butterworth and Jo Lloyd move inside the pavilion’s elegant greys, and alongside its still waters, in a new dance work that channels the eternal, contrasting symbol of the dark and light swan.

The performance is the latest in their long-running series of duets and marks their return to MPavilion after their two-hour work in 2018 ‘All Our Dreams Came True’. It continues their project of testing the reciprocal ways two bodies tend to inhabit new space—moving, being watched, coming together and breaking apart. Their swanlike duality will manifest individually, and as a fused duet—as each dancer disappears into the other. Camouflaging two within one. Tadao Ando’s use of light and shadow will be fully harnessed as the work moves inside then outside the structure—introducing each new space with Deanne and Jo’s collaborative grace and signature physicality. 

CollaboratorS

Deanne Butterworth is a performer, choreographer, and teacher whose practice is preoccupied with the investigation of movement and how it relates to the physical, emotional, and sonic space in which it is located. She has shown her work and performed in the works of many choreographers in Australia and internationally over the past 30 years.  
 
Jo Lloyd is a dance artist based in Naarm, working with choreography as a social encounter, revealing behaviour over various durations and contexts. She has presented and performed her work in galleries, museums and theatres both nationally and internationally. Her practice seeks to find a language that refuses the limits of history, form and aesthetics.