Structural - Brooke Leeder & Dancers | WA Museum Boola Bardip

WA Museum Boola Bardip is a place to share Western Australia’s many stories. Our people, our places and our role in the world.
To celebrate the opening of the Museum with interstate and international audiences unable to travel, WA Museum Boola Bardip has collaborated with Perth Festival to produce films that showcase creative works inspired by and filmed in the stunning new Museum.
More than 100 people from Western Australia’s creative industries were employed to work on these films that highlight Western Australia’s world-class artistic talent and the Museum's stunning heritage-listed buildings and contemporary spaces.
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"STRUCTURAL"
Director: Renee Webster
Cinematographer: Allan Myles
Producers: Tania Chambers, Clint Logan
Choreographer: Brooke Leeder
Supported by: STRUT Dance
Composer: Louis Frere-Harvey
Dancers: Celina Hage, Scott Elstermann, Lilly King, Tyrone Robinson, May Greenberg, Mitch Aldridge, April Vardy, Scott Ewen
FEATURED WA MUSEUM BOOLA BARDIP LOCATIONS
Western Terrace; Level three open space; The Lantern viewing point; Terrazzo grand staircase.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
Structural is a contemporary dance piece choreographed by Brooke Leeder. This dance does not limit itself to a stage, it’s much more of a relationship and a story that develops between the dancers and the architecture they are performing in. What better piece to bring to the WA Museum which itself, becomes one of the main characters.
I was inspired by the reflective surfaces and the city skylines that can be viewed from many aspects. Brooke’s choreography really focusses on the relationship between the dancers and the building. Driving everything is this incredibly textured, dynamic soundtrack.
In this piece I decided to allow the camera to impose itself on the dance and to really control the way we told this story. The camera fuses with the music, sometimes frenetic in movement and at other times tightly controlled.
We created costumes specifically for this film and that involved some incredible dye work that comes up beautifully. The dancers really feel like they belong to the architecture and the steel blue hues resonate beautifully with the gold in the space.
It was a technical challenge, adapting a choreography for eight dancers to fit into unusual spaces and places, but what was so joyful was seeing the work awaken within the incredible architecture of the museum. We used big spaces, stairs, reflections and the choreography uses the structures within the museum as performative surfaces.
For this piece we used natural light, letting the passage of sunlight and time become a part of the performance. It starts with the very first light of day and closes with the coming of night.
© Western Australian Museum 2020