Poking The Snake

“As soon as you have anything to do with gender relationships it's going to be provocative for some people,” says Kate Denborough about Flesh & Bone, her latest production with KAGE dance theatre collaborator, Gerard Van Dyck. “There's lots of role reversal for the two of us – man and woman – and the modern day relationship and how it plays out in current thinking.”

KAGE has collaborated with a group of Melbourne University gender studies students. They've been “talking about current thinking about roles in society and the broader issues around young people, sexuality and gender,” says Denborough. “We wanted to get a really contemporary view of people in their late-teens and early-20s.” Writer Clementine Ford is facilitating these the conversations and will also be part of a Q&A session at one of the performances. Fashion designer Lisa Gorman has worked on the costumes for the show.

The conversation on gender politics, says Denborough, is a big topic. “There's a lot of work to be done, and I don't think this work is addressing the really broad issues. But the conversations we've been having with the youth group and Clementine, hopefully will find positivity and ways for this new generation to make a difference.

“I think people are used to thinking of dance as being very abstract. There's no text, but I'm a big believer in movement being absolutely a very clear storyteller. Something like 75% of all language is through body language, and you can read a lot more than you perhaps realise just through physical bodies and their proximity and their relationship to each other than necessarily having a big script would.”