The Temperance Hall at 199 Napier St, South Melbourne, becomes a hub for experimental choreography and performance for Melbourne Fringe Festival 2022, with over two weeks of programmed performances, six artists from diverse practices and unique perspectives, from September 12- October 15..
Curated by Temperance Hall’s Artistic Director, Phillip Adams, the first week features two double-bills of new works by independent dance artists, Arabella Frahn-Starkie and Siobhan McKenna, Gabriella Imrichova, and collaborating artists Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff.
Arabella Frahn-Starkie presents Ken Burns, a new experimental dance work taking cues from documentary cinema.
In this semi-autobiographical piece, Arabella contemplates the unspoken details of her family’s history and considers how she carries her loved ones inside her every action.
In keeping with Arabella’s preoccupation with documentation and archiving, her new work takes the act of looking back into a sensorial realm, drawing upon grief as a motivational impulse to look back into memory and wondering what is achieved in doing so.
Relay is a new, contemporary dance work by choreographer Siobhan McKenna that continues her interest in the relationships between movement and language.
In Relay, Siobhan McKenna and Claire Leske pass movement back and forth between each other as if engaged in a dynamic conversation.
The work guides the audience’s gaze to flick between the two performers as they investigate relationships of agreement, debate and exchange whilst attending to the rules and rhythms of their interaction.
Then Gabriella Imrichova presents no destination, an-ongoing-forever-never-ending attempt to parallel a queer desire for becoming unlocatable/illegible via one body, many tools, and objects.
Held together by some dry humour, the body is unsettlingly collaged, deconstructed, and then thrown to the wayside to die.
Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff present Two Women Enter the Toilet Cubicle. Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change the toilet paper roll.
“Temperance Hall gives licence to thrill in this year’s Melbourne Fringe,” says Artistic Director, Phillip Adams. “
A double bill of extra queerordinary works by choreographers Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff and Gabriella Imrichova. These performances offer fierce commentary on gender, from briny amusement drawn out from the trashy mundane, to highbrow manifesto of dunny-wall-graffiti-art performance.”
Full program information including descriptions of individual works and artist bios are available on the Temperance Hall website: www.temperancehall.com.au
Arabella Frahn-Starkie and Siobhan McKenna
Dates: Wed Sep. 12 – Sat. Oct. 15
Time: 7pm
Gabriella Imrichova, Kady Mansour and Michaela Tancheff
Dates: Wed. Sep. 12-Oct.15
Time: 8.30pm
Tickets: Full $22, Conc. $18, MobTix $10, Two double-bills: $30
Venue: Temperance Hall, 199 Napier St, South Melbourne
Access: Wheelchair accessible

• Cheryl Threadgold