NAISDA Diploma Developing Artists Amy Flannery and Joan Atkinson have recently returned from the Gold Coast, where they undertook a special secondment with Karul Projects to create and perform a piece in the Commonwealth Games Festival 2018.
Here’s what Amy had to say about her time up on the Gold Coast and the excitement of performing as part of the official Commonwealth Games Festival 2018.
Joan and I were lucky enough to travel to the Gold Coast to perform as part of Festival 2018 for the Commonwealth Games. Festival 2018 was a huge celebration of arts, with heaps of free events, performances and installations taking place across the Gold Coast and in Brisbane for people to watch and participate in.
We started in Brisbane and spent two weeks with the Karul Projects mob to create the piece, called Modern Dreaming. We travelled down to Broadbeach to perform the one-hour piece over three days, then back to Brisbane to perform a final time.
The experience gave wonderful insight into what it’s like to work as an independent artist. It was really great to work with Thomas E.S. Kelly (Founder of Karul Projects and a graduate of NAISDA) and the other artists. It gave us a glimpse into what it’s like to work with a choreographer and was really great to see that if you want to keep up with everything, you have to be on the ball. We were fortunate to be quite involved in the creation of the piece.
Performing itself was a truly memorable experience. We were performing in a giant sand circle down at Broadbeach. There was absolutely no shade and we were crazy hot, sweating and sticking to the sand with our sunscreen – it was messy, but a great experience! For me, the best part was the feedback we received from audience members. It was so rewarding to have people come up to us after the show and tell us how touched they were by our performance.
Joan and I would like to say a huge thank you to Thomas and Karul Projects for having us. It was a really great experience.
The piece itself will be showing at PACT in Erskineville, Sydney from 25 May – 2 June under the new name SNAP*CLICK*SHOT. For more information, click here.