Synopsis

PLONK! (Foreign Body)
by Gretel Taylor

My body lands in this new place: PLONK! A foreign object. A thing out of place. I listen with all my senses, try to perceive the particularities of this site, enter into a dialogue with it. Even the smells and textures of this place are hard for me to comprehend, as if the olfactory and haptic senses ‘speak’ a different language also. I know I will always be ‘other’ here, but I desire to fit in, find rapport, locate myself in relation to this environment. Through an embodied inhabitation of the site I negotiate the friction between my body's obvious alterity and my longing to belong. Gradually and uneasily my body etches its presence upon this new landscape.

Biography

Gretel Taylor is an Australian dancer and performance artist whose work is often site-specific. Recent works include her solo video installation Still Landing presented at Arts House Meat Market (Melbourne), Shifting Ground program (Alice Springs), Dancehouse (Melbourne), and SEAM conference (Sydney). In 2008 she completed a practice-based PhD in Performance Studies, exploring relationships between body, place and identity in Australia. In 2010 she was recipient of a solo performance residency through Victoria University, during which she developed her new dance work Tidal (still in progress).

Gretel has trained extensively in movement improvisation, Butoh and Body Weather in Australia, Japan and Europe. Past collaborators include Jill Orr, Jo Lloyd and James Geurts. Gretel also facilitates, researches and participates in regular dance camps with a large group of Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory, with the primary purpose of transferring cultural dance knowledge from elders to younger women. In 2011 she collaborated with these women to create a video installation for their performance. Over the past six years Gretel has been employed as a lecturer/ tutor in Performance Studies at Victoria University. She has performed with Tony Yap’s company in the BB0- series almost annually since 2001 and recently in Winter Filament at Federation Square, Melbourne.  Other recent performances include The Little Con at Dancehouse and Café Urgency at Newport Substation.