“We can’t stop making art" - NDRNCE present a new work as part of the Young Artist Forum
Look out, Brisbane! Metro Arts is hosting a free four-day forum for emerging artists. The Young Artist Forum will be buzzing with talks, panels, workshops, and events, facilitating connections between seasoned professionals and fresh meat. The forum will also feature art installations and creative development showings.
Formerly known as Ritual Theatre, NDRNCE is an all-female ensemble with strong foundations in physical theatre, immersive, interactive, and collaboratively devised work. This will be their second show, following Be Our Witness at Anywhere Festival and Backbone Festival in 2019. They have been developing their show, Tangerine Hour since March last year.
Image supplied. Cover image: Morgan Roberts.
I spoke to Gina Tay Limpus from NDRNCE (pronounced ‘Endurance’), one of three emerging ensembles supported by Metro Arts’ Creative Development Program, to hear about the work they have been doing.
“It’s been a nice full year process. We got to spend a lot of time on the conceptual development side of it because of Covid. Most of the development happened over zoom”.
The Creative Development Program is a yearly program run by Metro Arts to support emerging artists. Artists receive theatre space, funding, creative and producing mentorship, and ‘the freedom to focus on process rather than outcome; to follow their curiosity wherever it leads’. NDRNCE applied to the development and found out, shortly after, that they were successful. They had one week in the space to put the show together.
“It was really good to have that time constraint, of ‘oh you’ve been thinking about it for a year, now do it”.
During the program, Gina has found the team at Metro Arts to be incredibly generous and flexible.
Tangerine Hour is a blend of physical theatre, dance theatre and verbatim theatre, centred around “the moment between, as the sun is setting or as the sun is rising, where you have these really intimate moments with someone that you only ever have in that time of day”.
“Every single one of [the] conversations that you see in the show are from our lives and are conversations that we’ve had with somebody else, underneath the streetlamps, at sunset, at sunrise”.
Following the recent lockdown in Brisbane, the ensemble feared the forum wouldn’t go ahead, a fear that many of us working in the arts know well. But Gina’s confidence left me feeling inspired.
“We can’t stop making [art] in case we don’t get to put it on. We’ll make it and then hope that we can figure out a way”.
The Young Artist Forum will be held at Metro Arts in West End from the 8th to 11th of April. NDRNCE will be performing Tangerine Hour at the opening night. Grab your tickets to the forum here.
