Campbelltown Arts Centre hosts rare intergenerational collaboration
Contemporary dance often celebrates youth and virtuosity, making MSTM's deliberate focus on intergenerational exchange feel particularly significant. This new work brings together four choreographers spanning different career stages, Martin del Amo, Sue Healey, Tra Mi Dinh, and Mitchell Christie, to create what promises to be genuine dialogue between established artists and emerging voices rather than a simple mentorship arrangement.
The collaboration pairs two duos with existing working relationships: Martin and Sue as longtime collaborators, Tra Mi and Mitch as frequent partners from a younger generation. This structure creates natural foundations while challenging both pairs to negotiate unfamiliar territory. The resulting quartet formation (four artists moving fluidly between choreographer and performer roles) suggests work interested in the creative process as much as with the finished product.
Sue Healey's return to live performance after a decade-long absence adds particular weight to the project. Her recent focus on dance film and installation art brings different perspectives to theatrical performance, potentially influencing how the work considers space, framing, and the relationship with the audience. Her reflection on lineage, "how dance and ideas echo through time, carried by bodies across generations," positions the work as an investigation of artistic inheritance rather than mere collaboration.
The question of what dancers carry forward and what they release resonates beyond abstract artistic inquiry. Each generation of dance artists inherits technical vocabularies, aesthetic preferences, and philosophical approaches from predecessors, while developing responses to their own historical moment. MSTM's exploration of this could illuminate how contemporary dance maintains continuity while embracing change.
The creative team's intergenerational structure extends beyond the performers. Sound designer Gail Priest's established career paired with emerging lighting designer Frankie Clarke creates a similar dynamic of experience meeting fresh perspectives, burgeoning artistic philosophies across all production elements.
The audience experience promises to challenge conventional theatre-going expectations as well. Entering through backstage and encountering "an atmospheric threshold of projections, sound, and miniature performances" before reaching the main performance space, indicates that this work is interested in transformation and transition as theatrical elements. This dramaturgical choice mirrors the performers' investigation of shifting roles and unstable alignments.
Martin del Amo's observation that the performers and the audience share equally in questioning what they witness, predicts this work will resists easy interpretation. This openness could prove either liberating or frustrating depending on the way it is executed. The most successful conceptual dance-style creates space for multiple readings, without becoming so open-ended that any meaning disappears entirely.
The performers all have impressive individual credentials. Del Amo's 30-year career and recent Creative Australia Award for Dance establishes his significance in Australian contemporary dance. Healey's dual Australia Council Award and international recognition for dance film demonstrates ongoing artistic evolution. Tra Mi Dinh's 2022 Keir Choreographic Award and upcoming work with Sydney Dance Company marks her as a rising force, while Mitchell Christie's international training and commitment to inclusive practice brings contemporary sensibilities to the collaboration.
The work's focus on how artists "see each other" and negotiate the nature of their collaboration addresses fundamental questions about ensemble creation in general. Contemporary dance increasingly values devised work where the hierarchical choreographer-dancer relationship gives way to more democratic processes. MSTM appears to explore both the possibilities and the challenges of such approaches.
Campbelltown Arts Centre's support through artist residency reflects the venue's commitment to nurturing new work outside Sydney's inner-city centres. The limited season does create some urgency for audiences, while allowing the work to maintain it's experimental character.
The explicit examination of "chaos and order" through "shifting formations and unstable alignments" predicts choreography that makes visible the negotiations usually hidden within a polished performance. This transparency about creative processes could provide audiences with unusual access to how collaborative dance-making actually functions.
MSTM runs November 6-8 at Campbelltown Arts Centre, with a matinee on November 7 followed by Q&A.
Tickets and details: https://c-a-c.com.au/mstm/
(main image: Wendell Teodoro)
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