Multi-Solo Work in Progress
MULti-solo
- WORK IN PROGRESS -
An absurd theatrical dance solo performed by multiple people at the same time.
development @ the substation 2025
For two weeks in April 2025, long-time collaborators Alisdair Macindoe and Alison Currie underwent a studio development of Multi-solo.
The two weeks were spent sketching out the form of the work, and resulted in a 45 minute sequence shared with peers at The Substation main space.
This development saw them realise a rigging system for the work, set and prop choreographic ideas, improvisational scores and choreographic moments.
DEVELOPMENT CREDITS
Co-direction,Choreography,Concept,Writing:
Alison Currie & Alisdair Macindoe
Performers/co-choreographers: Geoffrey Watson,
Rachel Coulson, Raina Peterson, Kyall Shanks
Sound Design: Alisdair Macindoe
Costume Design: Alisdair Macindoe
Executive Producer: Penelope Leishman Insite Arts
Assistant Producer: Sebastian Calabretto
Rigging Design: Misha Doe & Alisdair Macindoe
Photos: Jeff Busby
Video: Takeshi Kondo
This work was developed with Dancenorth in 2023 as part of its 4 Walls and a Floor Program
““...a perfectly executed work that interrogated, at its heart, humans’ love of consumption and the ugly side to our consumerist addiction.”★★★★☆ ”
MULTI-SOLO is a situational choreographic metaphor unpacking the friction between individualism and the suppressive, billionaire-owned digital regimes that now colonise our pockets and minds.
Co-directors Alisdair Macindoe (VIC) and Alison Currie (SA) extend their celebrated partnership to centre this project with a Victorian team in Naarm.
We use choreography to mirror the world we are currently creating and inhabiting. In MULTI-SOLO, we are exploring "experimental unison" as a metaphor for the algorithmic pressure to conform. This work is a visceral protest against the relentless drive toward a consumerist sameness; it is a live interrogation of how advertising and constant automated digital connectivity have become a form of pocket-sized totalitarianism.
By placing four soloists in a rigorous piece, prepared as a solo and performed on the same stage concurrently, we invite the audience to reflect on the impact of individualist consumer culture on the bodies, psyche’s, and cultures we inhabit.
Multi-solo is the 2nd work by dance artists Alison Currie and Alisdair Macindoe, following the successful ‘Progress Report’ (The Substation, FRAME Biennial 2023 & Vitalstatistix 2021). Progress Report received several positive reviews and was nominated for an “Outstanding Collaboration” Ruby Award in 2022 and Rachel Coulson was nominated for a greenroom award for her performance of Progress report in 2023.
Multi-solo is an access informed, experimental contemporary performance work, that features four accomplished, experienced dance artists, each who embody different backgrounds and unique perspectives that inform their physicality as they dance. Sharing the stage, these ‘soloists’ perform their version of the same solo at the same time.
““Performed superbly by Macindoe on this occasion...Progress Report is riveting dance theatre that uses humour and whimsy to raise serious issues about our complicated relationship to waste. With its pared back staging, this is a work that could easily tour: indeed, it should be shown for as long as Styrofoam is with us.””
