Animalising – Becoming Animal / Intense / Imperceptible
Photo by Adele Wilkes
ABOUT
Two dancers, Tony Yap and Jack Riley, with a 40-year age difference, showcasing striking contrasts and surprising similarities. These contrasts arise from differences in age, traditional cultures, and dance styles, whilst their similarities lie in their shared intensity-focused aesthetics and involvement in queer sub-cultures.
The performance of 'Animalising' delves into the themes of sexlessness and nakedness, combining them with a captivating trance-like intensity.
Back from a shamanistic bull-trance rituals in East Java, Indonesia, the dancers draw out their animalising into states of possession. Mas Agus Riyanto is the supreme trance-master and he induces the dancers into trance zones as he whips, and they morph to become animals, intense and imperceptible. Additionally, Reuben Lewis spells the ritual by creating and composing a third element, developing the sonic-choreographic trance-scape.
CREATORS
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www.tonyapcompany.com
Tony Yap, born in Malaysia, is an accomplished dancer, director, choreographer and visual artist. He has made a commitment to the exploration and creation of an individual dance theatre language that is informed by psycho-physical research,Asian shamanistic trance dance, Butoh, Vocal extentions.Tony has received numerous nominations and awards including The Decay of the Angel which won him a Green Room Award for Best Male Dancer; and Rasa Sayang in and The Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance.
He has been a leading figure in inter-cultural discourse and received Asialink residential grants to work in Indonesia in 2005, and 2008 and a Dance fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts. Tony is the founding Creative Director of Melaka Arts and Performance Festival – MAP Fest.
He continues in his contribution significantly to the development of contemporary dance & performance practice, particularly bringing a non-Western perspective to the palette of work being created. His practice is grounded in: Asian philosophies, sensibilities and forms and takes him internationally in new collaboration of new work and trance-in-dance pedagogy. Tony’s contemporary trance praxis is the heart of his PhD research in physical theater and multidisciplinary practice.
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Jack is a multi-genre performer, actor and digital artist based in Melbourne. Jack is a graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts (BFA) Dance. After graduating he was commissioned as VCA and Melbourne University’s ambassador for dance presenting his work Duplex at the Academy de bel Arti Florence for the University’s “First Commissions” marketing campaign. Jack has performed for several Australian dance companies, Chunky Move under Antony Hamilton ‘Token Armies’ Melbourne international festival 2019 and opening ceremony at Potato Head Bali, Indonesia for Futura ‘Pointman warrior’ sculpture unveiling 2022. Australian Opera ‘King Roger’ 2018, Tasdance 2017 and force Majeure ‘You animal, you’ Arts House 2018 Melbourne International festival.
Alongside performing Jack has created and produced three of his own self- funded full-length dance works. ‘Alone’ 2018 was toured and presented at Chunky Move, Canberra Theatre Centre and State Theatre centre Perth. Now Jack is pursuing acting roles starring in multiple short films, ‘Each Other’ 2020 presented at Melbourne International Film festival, Brisbane International Film Festival and Slamdance film festival 2021. ‘Incarnation’ directed by Bernard Winter 2023 was nominated for best short film and best actor at the St Kilda film festival and nominated for AACTA Awards for best short film.
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Reuben Lewis is a musician of white settler heritage with an active practice in cross-genre, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He has worked with movement artists since 2015 on large scale and site specific works, most frequently with influential trance movement practitioner Tony Yap for premieres at festivals such as AsiaTOPA in Australia and MAP Melaka in Malaysia. Other projects include ‘Memoir for Rivers and The Dictator’ with Lilian Steiner, premiered at Dance Massive, ARIA nominated 'Closed Beginnings' with poet Tariro Mavondo and APRA Art Music Award winning ‘Silent Towns', a 24hr telematic work by the Phonetic Orchestra.
Reuben is the Artistic Director of I Hold the Lion’s Paw, an ensemble founded in 2016 with a goal to make genre defying work with a distinctly Australian musical identity. Recent projects include ‘Lost in Place’ - a durational jazz-butoh crossover performance devised in collaboration with Yumi Umiumare and Taka Takiguchi (滝口貴), and ‘Imagination Exploration’ - a touring program for children focusing non idiomatic group improvisation devised in collaboration with Musica Viva Australia in Schools.
Reuben was appointed Australian Art Orchestra’s Pathfinder Associate Artist (2019/2020), AMC Artistic Associate for Jazzahead! (2020-2021) and was a 2018+2019 Freedman Jazz Fellowship nominee.
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Agus Riyanto revived the traditional art of Bull-trance (Bantengan) that had been extinct in the city of Batu, East Java. He is founding director of the supreme Bantengan Trance Carnival, Bantengan Nuswantara in collaboration with the Arts Island Festival 2008 - 2014. He achieved Awards for bull-trances and bull whips in Batu since 1985.
Mas Agus is a sharman and a proficient painter. Agus is highly respected in East Java for his deep understanding and work in trance performances and have lately incorporate it in contemporary experimentations with great success working with Agung Gunawan and Tony Yap in Melaka and Melbourne in ‘8 Men’ and ‘Shadow’s Light with performers from varied international backgrounds.
The present Bantengan festive attracts over 200 performing groups and 1.5 million audience and participants in the city of Batu in East Java. The festival includes two sections involving international artists and a collaborative platform for creative exchanges and conversations. -
Taka Takiguchi 滝口貴 is an independent practicing artist and producer of Japanese heritage based in Naarm (Melbourne) with over 10 years of experience in the arts sector. His art-making process is to question social norms and their structures from intersectional perspectives and to create provocative works through the mediums of poetry, installations, and various movement-based techniques: Suzuki Method, Butoh, and shamanic/trance dance practices.
His unique background as a social worker and an inclusive art practitioner has greatly informed his artistic aesthetics and practice. He founded his production company, ImPermanence Productions in 2015. He was one of the recipients of the Victorian Independent Producers Initiative (2020-2021), an initiative funded by Creative Victoria.
He has achieved to produced and performed 25 community-led performing arts festivals in 4 countries (Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India) and programmed several hundred artists from all around the world since 2015.
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Adele Wilkes is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose practice encompasses moving image, sound, photography, projection and installation, with a focus on expanded, experimental, poetic and essayistic modes of documentary and cinematic storytelling.
Informed by her personal history and syncretic cultural identity, Adele’s practice engages with ways of being and knowing that exist outside, or challenge, dominator culture, often evolving over time through complex interrelationships. Her current work explores the mycelial connections between psychedelic plants, visionary states, ecological consciousness, animist cosmologies, sensory perception, neuroscience and our relationship with the more-than-human. She is particularly excited by the transformative potential of collaborative, experiential and ritual processes.
PHOTO
Adele Wilkes (Promotional - Top)
Teague Leigh (Production - Two gallaries)
Awards
April 2025 - Greenroom Nominations
- Dance Outstanding Design_Sound for Reuben Lewis
- Dance Outstanding Performer for Agus Riyanto
Acknowledgement
Abbotsford Convent
Creative Victoria
Lucy Gurien Inc
Tony Yap + Collaborators
Auspicious Arts Projects
Reviews
“... exquisite... There are real lessons to be learned from the way Yap builds his work.”
“Yap articulates the power of shamanism for a Western theatrical audience largely ignorant of its traditions and distant from its cultural origins.”
Production History
PREMIERE
8-10 Feb 2024
Abbotsford Covent
Industrial School
As part of the Midsummer Festival 2024
