A Dozen Dances

It began with two short solo dances for the 2010 Shorter + Sweeter micro dance festival in Sydney. Well, it actually began with one. Looking back, choreographer Martin del Amo recalls a vague response from one dancer who he approached for the project, which led him to seek out another, only to realise the dancer first approached was in fact keen to participate. So, it began with two solo dances. Having already had the application accepted for one dancer, del Amo pirouetted through some red tape, managed to get both dances included as a single ten-minute piece and went searching for a title.

“What came up was Slow Dances For Fast Times, but I didn't want to go 'Part One' and 'Part Two' so I just went 'Part Three' and 'Part Nine' and found myself writing, 'Once completed, this project will consist of 12 short solos',” del Amo recalls, laughing at how confidently and haphazardly he incidentally set himself to task a few years ago.

“It was mainly for the program notes, to make it look as if this was part of a bigger explanation – which it kind of was, but not really formulated just yet. The feedback was really good and that got me thinking that this would actually be a really interesting project to do, to try and develop over a period of time a collection of many short solos. And then straight away I thought of it as almost like an album, like a concept album, where you have one unifying idea and many different explorations that come underneath that,” says del Amo.

Those first two dances marked a shift in his practice – a more concerted focus on choreography – and del Amo was keen to use the project to stretch himself artistically, so a diverse selection of music was chosen to inspire each piece as a new, unique challenge for both the dancer and del Amo.

“The idea became that each of these pieces would be danced to a song – mainly pop songs, but there are two arias and a Spanish torch song as well – so the length of the dance is defined by the length of the song,” del Amo explains. “The soundtrack is very eclectic; it starts with the '60s, Hendrix; and moves to the '90s – Portishead and Radiohead – into the 2000s, Regina Spektor… The choice of the songs as well as the choice of the dancers was intuitive, but in relation to each other. The order became very important – the overall composition – like an album. I've always been fascinated in terms of choreography and composition how albums are put together, that was especially relevant with vinyl, when you still had two sides.”

As we talk, just a week before rehearsals are due to commence, del Amo reflects once again on the ambitious task he set himself three years ago. “Now I look back and go, 'How did I ever think that I would be able to pull that off?' Twelve dancers from different states, to get them all in one room – I'll believe it when I see it!”

Before we part, he drops that hint that, like all concept albums worth their salt, there may be a hidden track.