RealTime Arts - Studio - six-women-standing-in-front-of-a-white-wall

six women standing in front of a white wall

Little Dove Theatre Art
six women standing in front of a white wall

alone together

“... Six Women Standing In Front Of A White Wall ... could be the most astonishing show on the Fringe. It's the hardest-hitting physical theatre I've seen in a long time...They veer from ecstatic to aggressive to raw primal movement. It is sometimes disturbing to watch. Slowly, audience members attempt to soothe these strangers by going up and touching them, with a self-conscious stroke or a long, heartfelt hug. Some people cry, others look like they've just been handed the moon. It is a moving exposition on the nature of touch and the fact that we interact like this so rarely.” The Scotsman, Edinburgh

Little Dove Theatre Art

Director Chenoeh Miller writes that Little Dove’s butoh-influenced performative installation “is an investigation into the possibility that it’s not necessarily a kind of love we crave but more the physiological need for human touch to survive.” Six women stand on plinths behind a gallery style cordon on which hangs a sign reading “Please Touch.” The performers, from backgrounds as diverse as visual arts, classical dance, Tadashi Suzuki training and gymnastics, respond to audience touch with a range of strategies depending on the emotional state of being each represents. The result is a performance which has been described as both rivetting and confronting.

Formerly from Canberra, Miller was trained in performance at the University of Western Sydney and by Zen Zen Zo in Brisbane. She has staged Six women…in Brisbane and Canberra [as part of the National Multicultural Festival Fringe] and will take it to the Edinburgh Fringe in August this year. In an interview with Peter Wilkins for the Canberra Times, Miller explained that her motivation for forming Little Dove Theatre Art was “to explore the physical manifestation of different kinds of love…Does Artaud intend his Theatre of Cruelty to be an act of love? I thought, of course he does, but he’s coming at it [so aggressively] despite the desperate desire to give to the audience.”

Image: Six women standing in front of a white wall; from left: Erica Field, Emma Schofield, Kat Henry, Helen Smith, Carly Rees, Agatha Gothe-Snape; photo ‘pling