Songlines

A piece for eight dancers, created to the fascinating musical composition In C  by Terry Riley. The title of the piece refers to the aboriginal  pathways called Songlines which makeup a labyrinth of invisible tracks  that crisscross Australia carrying the myths of legendary beings  wandering the land, dancing and singing the world into existence. In  close connection with the musical score, choreographer Joanne Leighton  sets in motion a series of perpetual movements giving rise to a ritual, a  « totem in movement », leaving a visual and sonic trace. Songlines  is dance as performance, but also dance as remembering, mapping and  tracing a path. It is movement as language and the performance space as a  landscape across which we write, rewrite and create our own stories,  experiences, memories, and rituals. What contemporary totems resonate  with today’s footsteps? What traces will our steps leave upon us, and  upon the land we walk ?