OzAsia Festival’s The Long Walk Encore Screening Available Now
Adelaide audiences were the first to enjoy the world premiere of acclaimed choreographer Sue Healey’s ground-breaking dance performance The Long Walk live streamed via drone from Robe, South Australia during last year’s OzAsia Festival. Now, audiences from all around the world will be able to stream an encore performance for free during the month of May to coincide with the SA History Festival on Adelaide Festival Centre’s website.
Choreographer Sue Healey’s The Long Walk is inspired by the pilgrimage of over 16,000 Chinese miners in the 1850s to Victoria’s goldfields. Chinese miners trekked more than 400 kilometres from Robe to Victoria to avoid paying an arrival tax imposed under anti-Chinese legislation introduced by the Victorian Government.
Sue Healey 2 photo credit Heidrun Lohr
Sue Healey: “Imagine what it must have been like in the 1850s, for all those thousands of Chinese miners who landed in that very isolated place that is completely alien: new landscape, environment. And then how they walked many hundreds of kilometres to the Victorian goldfields. I mean, it’s mind boggling, isn’t it?
“I’m very much paying homage to that resilience and grit and determination those miners must have had.”
The piece was performed on Robe’s uniquely beautiful, rugged coastline and led by Asian Australian dancers Kimball Wong, Julian Renlong Wong, Ko Yamada, Tayla Hoadley, and Queenie Wu, and simultaneously streamed online and to Adelaide Festival Centre’s Space Theatre via real-time drone and camera recording as the dancers moved spontaneously across the extraordinary landscape.
Queenie Wu at Robe – photo credit Sue Healey 1
Sue Healey: “I really want to suggest that they [the audience] watch it on a large screen. Scale is important for something like this, because I’m looking at the massive scale of cliffs and waves crashing on the cliffs and the dancers being quite small. But then I cut to very close up cameras.
“If the audience can watch it on a large screen, it will be much better. Oh, and wear good headphones as well, so you can really hear the sound!”
The Long Walk features an original score by world-renowned percussionist Ben Walsh.
Ben Walsh – BTS The Long Walk – Photo by Wendell Theodoro
Sue Healey: “The process, when I work with Ben, is quite bizarre. It’s very improvised. I place Ben in the landscape, so he’s very much a visual part of this project as well. It’s not just the sonic aspect of what he makes, but he is part of the visual material as well. What he does is he is responding to my live edit and he is creating the music on the spot.
“We have worked together for many years, so we know what the other is going to do next. He knows what sounds intrigue me and what I want to work with, and I offer him these very spectacular and slightly crazy images to compose to. It’s a great close relationship we have. The way he creates the music is him responding in live time to my live edit. He’s watching it on a small monitor as I edit the live dance from four different cameras that are working on this project.”
The Long Walk is available to stream now for free on Adelaide Festival Centre’s website.
For more information, visit: https://watch.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/videos/the-long-walk-ozasia-festival