TAINTED TITLE is a work choreographed and conceived by Tim Darbyshire, with sound design by Thembi Soddell and ever evolving performers and their thoughts.
Text from Tim Darbyshire’s website:
TAINTED TITLE works with an automatic and continually shifting dialogue between groups of performers, a choreographer and a sound designer within an ‘empty room’. In parallel to their movements, a fluent text or voice scrolls through and plagues the space, referring directly and indirectly to the situations that the choreography illustrates.
TAINTED TITLE explores acts of translation and slippage in communication. This has come about through a curiosity in the paradoxical workings of internal dialogue (thought) vs. external representation through body language, movement and speech – to show or say one thing, but to feel or think something else. The project employs an adaptable structure. It remains vital and is a continually shifting in response to the core choreographic framework. The individual performers change depending on the context of development/presentation i.e. performers in Reykjavik co-author a unique phrasing of movement in response to the core-structure, which is different to the performers in Zürich or other cities. The traces of each performance context are documented and referred to by the next group and context. This raises questions concerning notions of co-authorship, nuances in language, communication and mis-communication, individual voice, collectivity, collaboration and cultural contexts in dialogue.
On a logistical level, this structure seeks to re-invent touring frameworks that represent singular cultural contexts and instead explores the act of transmission and translation as a touring model.
TAINTED TITLE (formerly known as ENTITLED TITLE) was originally commissioned by Dancehouse for the Keir Choreographic Award in 2014. The project was further researched in 2015 through a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, supported by Australia Council for the Arts, followed by creative developments supported by Creative Victoria and Tanzhaus Zürich in 2017.
Choreographer: Tim Darbyshire
Sound Designer: Thembi Soddell
Performers: Ever evolving, but including Deanne Butterworth, Sophia Cowen, Matthew Day, Benji Sunarjo, and Simon Fleury.