A new dance production is aiming to tackle a topic western culture prefers to disregard. [Photo Credit: AAP Photo]
The latest work from dance company The Farm is made for a very wide audience – it’s billed as a show for everyone who is going to die.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive will premiere at the Brisbane Festival, and The Farm’s Gavin Webber says it tackles a topic western culture prefers to disregard.
“That’s one of our failings in our society – that we don’t want to look at death, we want to ignore it because we want to live forever,” the co-artistic director said.
Instead, the west sidelines elderly people and obsesses over ways to hide the effects of ageing, such as Botox, Webber told AAP.
Founded in 2013, The Farm is based on the Gold Coast and has been making work that tours in Australia and internationally, with shows such as Stunt Double, Hold Me Closer Tony Danza, and Social Muscle Club.
Its four artistic directors have their roots in another Queensland company Dancenorth and work with famed Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard, and are variously based across the Gold Coast, Perth and Berlin.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive is the first time The Farm has auditioned for performers, and in an industry known for short-lived careers, some of those selected out of almost 100 hopefuls are aged in their mid-60s.
In developing the show, the dancers consulted people who are confronting their own mortality, including a woman who has been given a terminal diagnosis.
“They don’t want to hide it and put it under the rug, they want to bring it out into the open and have discussions about it,” said Webber.
He promises that despite the subject matter, the show is no funeral – the Grim Reaper is onstage, but he’s holding a mirror ball.
Finding humour in the topic has been vital for both performers and the audience while reflecting the complexity of grief, which can have people laughing and crying at the same time, said Webber.
He hopes the exploration of death through dance will actually become a celebration and greater awareness of life.
“We are all alive in this moment, it is an ephemeral and fragile thing, but it’s the most beautiful thing that can be.”
No One Gets Out of Here Alive plays at the Brisbane Festival September 9-12, followed by a run at Bleach Festival on the Gold Coast in October.
