Aimee Smith
Aimee Smith is an award winning choreographer and dance artist who has been creating, performing and collaborating on dance works in both Australia and overseas since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (Bachelor of Arts Honours 2004).
Aimee is obsessed with the capacity of art to make sense of the world in which we live, and the possibility of imagination to dream up the future. Her work engages multiple disciplines including theatre, sound design, new media and installation practice, often through collaboration with other artists. She is interested in how these contribute to and interact with the moving, dancing body and continues this investigation through her ongoing residency at cia studios
Aimee's works have been performed in Japan, Taiwan, India and Australia. Her choreographic works include Wintering (to be premiered in 2012), Borderlines (2012),Accidental Monsters of Meaning (2011), Breakings (2010), Courageously Heroic Gallantry (2007), Refund Policy (2007), Alpha.Beta. (2006) and Press Play(2006).
In 2007 she was named as the WA Dance award's Most Outstanding Emerging Artist and in 2011 she was nominated for Most Outstanding Choreography for her work Accidental Monster's of Meaning. Aimee has also been recognised as the Most Interesting Australian Artist in the 2007 and 2010 Dance Australia Critic's Survey.
As a performer Aimee has worked with international choreographers Paul Gazzola (Berlin/ Australia), Didier Theron (France), engaged in short term developments with Melbourne-based choreographers Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move), Gerard Van Dyke (KAGE) and Phillip Adams (Balletlab), and continues to work with local WA choreographers including Sue Peacock, Bianca Martin and Sam Fox.
Most recently Aimee has pursued her artistic practice and research through a Masters of Arts in Sustainability at Murdoch University WA, and through numerous international artist residencies including at Kyoto Arts Centre (Japan 2012), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan 2011) and a 2008 Asialink residency in India.
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Premiere season 19 - 27 May 2012, Arts House - Meat Market, North Melbourne, as part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival.
Choreography: Aimee Smith
Performers: Jenni Large & Rhiannon Newton
Wintering, the latest dance work by choreographer Aimee Smith, asks the question what is it to live in a changing and disintegrating world? How do we sit with the tension between beauty and destruction, hope and fear?
Inspired by the fragility and strength of an iced landscape this duet uses imagery and sounds collected by the artist from the Arctic environment together with the moving, dancing body to explore this complex relationship between humans and the natural world.
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Premiered at The Western Australian Museum, Perth 2011.
Suitable for gallery/ museum spaces or other public/ semi-public space.
Choreography: Aimee Smith
Performers: Deb Robertson, Rhiannon Newton, Natalie Holmwood, Aisling Donovan, Bianca Martin
Music: Sound design by Ben Taaffe
Set Construction: Ainsley Canning
What are the monsters of our time? Where are they leading us?
Accidental Monsters of Meaning is a durational performance installation set in the ambiguous and sterile space of a museum / zoo / viewing gallery / shopping mall world. The human being becomes a product of our times, the consumer becomes the product for consumption, and we are forced to face the realities of survival and extinction.
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Premiered at PICA, Perth 2010
Choreographed & performed by: Aimee Smith
Sound design: Ben Taaffe
Lighting design: Mike Nanning
Video mapping: Jerrem Lynch
Set design: Fiona Bruce & Bryan Woltjen
Breakings is a sharp, confronting and reflective look at today's mediated world.
Amongst a pile of out of tune television sets walls converge and a body is caught between hope and fear. An alarm clock sounds, a lone individual wakes in a domestic space like no other, where the virtual and real worlds mix, where her bed is today's newspaper, her cat is her TV, and her weetbix taste like the news.
As she is bombarded with a tirade of news bulletins, flashing images of beauty and perfection, and the lure of gameshow fame, the lone performer struggles to keep up with her ever changing environment where she no longer knows what's real, what's truth or what to believe in.
"Smith is a beautiful dancer and her performance on opening night was deft and sure." -The West Australian, April 2010
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Premiered at the Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, 2006
Suitable for gallery/ museum spaces or other public/ semi-public space
Concept devised by: Aimee Smith
Performers: Jessyka Watson-Galbraith, Aisling Donovan & Aimee Smith
Sound design: Dave Miller
Press Play is a performance installation that employs audience interactivity to explore ideas of power and manipulation in human nature.
Over a marathon performance (up to 4 hours) two dancers working within a confined space are at the complete mercy of their audience, who, by using a roaming 'remote control' device, dictate their every move.
The performer's choreography is instructed by a playlist of soundbites taken from recent Australian news reports and popular culture grabs - ranging from the seemingly superficial to more profound political statements uttered by the some of Australia's most 'powerful' figures in recent times. In the video displayed, John Howard's (in)famous election campaign line "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they comeā is spoken by Australian immigrants in their mother tongues.
A clever, mesmerizing examination of the human desires to control and conform.
Aimee is obsessed with the capacity of art to make sense of the world in which we live, and the possibility of imagination to dream up the future. Her work engages multiple disciplines including theatre, sound design, new media and installation practice, often through collaboration with other artists. She is interested in how these contribute to and interact with the moving, dancing body and continues this investigation through her ongoing residency at cia studios
Aimee's works have been performed in Japan, Taiwan, India and Australia. Her choreographic works include Wintering (to be premiered in 2012), Borderlines (2012),Accidental Monsters of Meaning (2011), Breakings (2010), Courageously Heroic Gallantry (2007), Refund Policy (2007), Alpha.Beta. (2006) and Press Play(2006).
In 2007 she was named as the WA Dance award's Most Outstanding Emerging Artist and in 2011 she was nominated for Most Outstanding Choreography for her work Accidental Monster's of Meaning. Aimee has also been recognised as the Most Interesting Australian Artist in the 2007 and 2010 Dance Australia Critic's Survey.
As a performer Aimee has worked with international choreographers Paul Gazzola (Berlin/ Australia), Didier Theron (France), engaged in short term developments with Melbourne-based choreographers Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move), Gerard Van Dyke (KAGE) and Phillip Adams (Balletlab), and continues to work with local WA choreographers including Sue Peacock, Bianca Martin and Sam Fox.
Most recently Aimee has pursued her artistic practice and research through a Masters of Arts in Sustainability at Murdoch University WA, and through numerous international artist residencies including at Kyoto Arts Centre (Japan 2012), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan 2011) and a 2008 Asialink residency in India.
Wintering
(full length duet work in development)Premiere season 19 - 27 May 2012, Arts House - Meat Market, North Melbourne, as part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival.
Choreography: Aimee Smith
Performers: Jenni Large & Rhiannon Newton
Wintering, the latest dance work by choreographer Aimee Smith, asks the question what is it to live in a changing and disintegrating world? How do we sit with the tension between beauty and destruction, hope and fear?
Inspired by the fragility and strength of an iced landscape this duet uses imagery and sounds collected by the artist from the Arctic environment together with the moving, dancing body to explore this complex relationship between humans and the natural world.
Accidental Monsters of Meaning
(durational performance installation)Premiered at The Western Australian Museum, Perth 2011.
Suitable for gallery/ museum spaces or other public/ semi-public space.
Choreography: Aimee Smith
Performers: Deb Robertson, Rhiannon Newton, Natalie Holmwood, Aisling Donovan, Bianca Martin
Music: Sound design by Ben Taaffe
Set Construction: Ainsley Canning
What are the monsters of our time? Where are they leading us?
Accidental Monsters of Meaning is a durational performance installation set in the ambiguous and sterile space of a museum / zoo / viewing gallery / shopping mall world. The human being becomes a product of our times, the consumer becomes the product for consumption, and we are forced to face the realities of survival and extinction.
Breakings
(full length solo work)Premiered at PICA, Perth 2010
Choreographed & performed by: Aimee Smith
Sound design: Ben Taaffe
Lighting design: Mike Nanning
Video mapping: Jerrem Lynch
Set design: Fiona Bruce & Bryan Woltjen
Breakings is a sharp, confronting and reflective look at today's mediated world.
Amongst a pile of out of tune television sets walls converge and a body is caught between hope and fear. An alarm clock sounds, a lone individual wakes in a domestic space like no other, where the virtual and real worlds mix, where her bed is today's newspaper, her cat is her TV, and her weetbix taste like the news.
As she is bombarded with a tirade of news bulletins, flashing images of beauty and perfection, and the lure of gameshow fame, the lone performer struggles to keep up with her ever changing environment where she no longer knows what's real, what's truth or what to believe in.
"Smith is a beautiful dancer and her performance on opening night was deft and sure." -The West Australian, April 2010
Press Play
(durational performance installation)Premiered at the Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, 2006
Suitable for gallery/ museum spaces or other public/ semi-public space
Concept devised by: Aimee Smith
Performers: Jessyka Watson-Galbraith, Aisling Donovan & Aimee Smith
Sound design: Dave Miller
Press Play is a performance installation that employs audience interactivity to explore ideas of power and manipulation in human nature.
Over a marathon performance (up to 4 hours) two dancers working within a confined space are at the complete mercy of their audience, who, by using a roaming 'remote control' device, dictate their every move.
The performer's choreography is instructed by a playlist of soundbites taken from recent Australian news reports and popular culture grabs - ranging from the seemingly superficial to more profound political statements uttered by the some of Australia's most 'powerful' figures in recent times. In the video displayed, John Howard's (in)famous election campaign line "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they comeā is spoken by Australian immigrants in their mother tongues.
A clever, mesmerizing examination of the human desires to control and conform.
