Third-year acting students worked with Jill Orr to create a new performance work in response to the work of William Kentridge. An exchange of ideas was created through dance, voice and image in a search for communication beyond words. The performance took place at the iconic Mining Exchange in Lydiard St North, in central Ballarat on Friday 27 May 2016.

The work enabled students to experience a different method of creating a performance based on intense improvised sequences that were crafted into a whole event. The success of the work, reflected in the essays students wrote about their experience, showed that their training, which began in their first year, had been finely honed to enable subtle confidence and nuanced listening. The physical and spatial awareness operated as a powerful group entity balanced by individual highlights. The work is collaborative and drawn entirely from the groups’ movement and voice improvisations without reference to text or predetermined form. The bodies have spoken.

A student’s response to the work:

‘We Stand Together, We Stand Alone’ … depicts human nature in a way that is raw and ambiguous, but is also shows relevance to the primal roots. Working with Jill Orr has been an enlightening experience as an emerging artist, highlighting the importance of marrying the voice to the physical self in order to find complete authenticity. Sometimes movement can influence us more than words.