Fire (2000/2019)
It is almost impossible to read the dancer’s body and its movements impartially – just as the perception of the element of fire is always embedded in other, previous experiences. Ros Warby’s adaptation of “Fire” is a result of Hay’s innovative “Solo Performance Commissioning Project”, which took place from 1998 through 2012. Each year Hay taught 20 dancers the same solo, a different solo each year. The dancers, for a minimum of the next three months, found their own adaptation through their daily practice of the dance. Warby’s adaptation of “Fire” convinced Hay to alter her own career and work with dancers with similar intelligence, humour and subtlety.

Ros Warby is an award winning Australian dancer and choreographer. She has been presenting her critically acclaimed solo work throughout Australia, Europe and the USA at numerous festivals and venues since 1990 including the Venice Biennale; Dance Umbrella – Royal Opera House, London; Sydney Opera House; Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals; South Bank Centre, London; TBA Festivals/PICA; DTW, New York amongst others. Her cinematic version of SWIFT was televised in 2007 on ABC and has been screened at international festivals worldwide. Warby has also performed with various companies and artists including Russel Dumas’ Dance Exchange, Lucy Guerin Inc. and the Deborah Hay Dance Company. Recognized for her unique performance work in all these contexts Warby is the recipient of the Robert Helpmann Award, The Age Critics Commendation Award, an Australia Council Fellowship, several Greenroom Awards and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. Warby began her long and fruitful association with Deborah Hay in 1998, and attended her first Solo Commissioning project in 1999 where she learnt FIRE. She has since performed and toured many of Hay’s solo works including “FIRE”, “Music”, “The Pitcher (The Match”), and “No Time to Fly”, as well as multiple ensemble works including “The Match”, “If I Sing to You”, “As Holy Sites Go”, “As Holy Sites Go/Duet” and “Animals on the Beach”. In 2011/12 Warby worked with Deborah Hay as part of the Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank Project. Warby currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the department World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and continues to create new solo and ensemble work.

Deborah Hay was a founding member of the experimental Judson Dance Theater and toured worldwide in 1964 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. For the last 30 years, she wrote and published while developing her own language for dance practice and choreography, which she applied in her work with both untrained and professional dancers. Commissioned works were produced by The Forsythe Company, Toronto Dance Theater and Cullberg Ballet, among others. Last year, MoMA opened their major exhibition “Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done”, which features Hay’s work alongside that of her pioneering dance contemporaries Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and others. Deborah Hay has been a guest at Tanz im August three times before, with “If I Sing to You” (2008), “No Time to Fly” (2012) and “Figure a Sea” (2016) with Cullberg.

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TFB Nr. 1351