Slow Burn, Together

Slow Burn, Together 2019-2021

WINNER OF 2022 Performing Arts WA Awards FOR

OUTSTANDING NEW WORK | DANCE | Slow Burn, Together, Emma Fishwick/Performing Lines WA for Perth Festival
OUTSTANDING NEWCOMER | DANCE | Francesca Fenton, Slow Burn, Together, Performing Lines WA for Perth Festival
OUTSTANDING PERFORMER | DANCE | Ella-Rose Trew, Slow Burn, Together, Performing Lines WA for Perth Festival

In a golden world of coconuts and grapefruits, piles of books and high heels, a clothing rack and a gramophone, Perth-based choreographer Emma Fishwick draws you into mesmerising vignettes filled with unexpected delights. Infused with a wry sense of humour, Slow Burn, Together is an antidote to the uncertainty of our times. A place of respite, and slowing down; of building human connection and demystifying high art.

Through a series of living pictures that collectively form a visual epic, Slow Burn, Together contemplates a female perspective of a world where we can be gentle, journey inward and pay attention to the experience of sitting longer with our thoughts, our ideas and time itself. There isn’t a singularity to each moment on stage, rather a slow experience, a collection of encounters that create an ongoing conversation between you and the work. The art historian Ernest Gombrich said once “the reading of a picture needs a very long time.” Maybe the same can be said of the experience of motion, movement, shape, space and all the rest.

Drawing from the masters of the Baroque and Pre-Raphaelite eras, Emma Fishwick plays with the tension of time and creates space for self-reflection and observation. Slow Burn, Together contemplates a female perspective as an ensemble of 15 women subvert their historic objectification to reveal the labour behind the façade. Let yourself be drawn into this series of moving pictures that collectively form a visual epic and offer a timely meditation on the world around us.

Reed states:

“Slow art is not a thing but an experience, an ongoing conversation between artwork and spectator…. Slow art is at odds with itself, playing stillness against motion, drawing images into events and thickening events into images” (2017, p. 36).

The initial development was made possible through a SEED Residency, a program run by STRUT Dance Org. The work was supported by The Department of Local Government, Sporting and Culture in 2020 and Commissioned by the Perth Arts Festival for 2021 presentation.

SeeSaw Magazine Review : Rita Clarke

The Conversation Review : Leah Mercer

CREATIVE TEAM

Choreography: Emma Fishwick

2021 Performers: Ella-Rose Trew, Francesca Fenton and an ensemble of 14 Women.

2020 Performers: Ella-Rose Trew, Laura Boynes, Third Year WAAPA Dance Artists

2019 Performers: Isabella Stone, Ella-Rose Trew, Laura Boynes, Michelle Aiken

Understudy: Emily Coles and Ellie Matzer

Set & Costume Designer: Bruce McKinven

Sound Designer: Tristen Parr

Lighting Designer: Chris Donnelly

Dramaturg: Dr Renée Newman

Design Associate: Amalia Lambert

Stage Manager: Chelsea Knight

Production Manager: Mark Haslam

Produced by: Performing Lines WA