Alongside her own work Kate has collaborated closely on many projects that were initiated or directed by colleagues. Here is a short selection of works she has been involved in over the last years in various ways....
Footnote Dance Company (NZ): Hullapolloi (2011)
Dance performance
Directed by: Jo Randerson and Kate McIntosh
Dancers: Francis Christeller, Lucy Marinkovich, Emily Adams, Emmanuel Reynaud, Olivia McGregor, and Danielle Lindsay.
Lighting: Piet Asplet
Music: engineered and sourced by Thom McIntosh and Kate McIntosh
Company director: Deirdre Tarrant
Here is a group of odd creatures. They seem to have a purpose in mind...
Hullapolloi is a beautiful, disturbing stab into the political dynamics of a group.
The Hullapolloi test what is known, what is successful, what is normal.
They negotiate behavioural boundaries -- swarming, competitive surges, comforting rituals.
In 2011 Kate McIntosh and theatre director Jo Randerson were invited to create and co-direct a performance for Footnote Dance Company in Wellington, New Zealand. This dance/theatre collaboration transforms the Footnote dancers into a collection of bodies that move together, breathe together – shuffle, grunt and fall together.
Performance-makers Jo Randerson and Kate McIntosh are both originally from Wellington - and alongside their individual cross-media artistic practices, they have already enjoyed several joint collaborations together on the international scene.
Jo and Kate's previous collaborations have often been inspired by themes of radical physical and personal metamorphosis. These performances have been strongly visual - working with costumes, movement, scenography and soundscapes to create a world populated by unusual beings. The physical body is treated as an active site of transformation, where the performers can shape-shift into new and sometimes extreme identities. However Kate and Jo's work is not escapist - it is deeply human at its heart, and most interested in what pressures, moves and shapes people’s lives in the real world.
Many thanks to Deirdre Tarrant for initiating and developing this opportunity to collaborate.
“… captivating, groundbreaking and simply unmissable.” Amy Hughson, theatreview.org.nz.
Forced Entertainment (UK): The Thrill of it All (2010)
Performance
Performers: Thomas Conway, Amit Hadari, Phil Hayes, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor, John Rowley.
Direction: Tim Etchells
Design: Richard Lowdon
Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards
Music and Sound: John Avery
Choreographic advice: Kate McIntosh
Director's Assistant: Hester Chillingworth
Production: Ray Rennie and Francis Stevenson
It's bright under the lights, and hot, and frightening. Nine performers in grubby tuxedos and tarnished sequins play out a comical and disconcerting vaudeville to the strains of Japanese lounge music.
Deranged dancing girls swirl, giggle, bicker and stray ever further from the point. Shabby comperes compete for the microphone and the audience’s laughter as the show itself slowly starts to unravel. Dances end in fights, jokes end in confusion and sentimental stories end in arguments in this unsettling and extraordinary performance.
Simone Aughterlony (NZ/CH): The Best and the Worst of Us (2008)
Performance
Concept: Simone Aughterlony
With: Simone Aughterlony, Kate McIntosh, Phil Hayes, Nicholas Lloyd, Thomas Wodianka
Dramaturgy: Fiona Wright
Artistic Advice: Laura Kalauz
Music: Marcel Blatti
Light: Christa Wenger / blendwerk
Set and Costumes: Nadia Fistarol
Production: Verein für allgemeines Wohl / Roger Merguin
The Best and Worst of Us looks at ways to approach a collaborative practice. It adopts a spontaneous diplomacy that hopes to trigger an instinctual yet advantageous group dynamic. Performing a kind of mob rule might give us the possibility of truly 'being together'. Systems have been put in place, appropriated and adapted from the behaviours of other species, social games and collective mythologizing.
We look for the moments when we are disciplined, bound together in working towards a common good. There are bad choices too and moments when we lose sight of the pleasure within the tyranny of the majority. We find ourselves becoming a better, cleaner body among the roar of the crowd. We move like a school of fish, like a swarm of bees, covering so much ground together, it’s as if we are indeed that flock of birds.
Even as we move in perfect unison, you might detect a small step slightly out of rhythm, or a gesture that betrays a singular desire. We know about reward because we have grown up with the dance between the common good and the lone impulse. But the lead roles will not make any entrances: there will be no lead roles on this stage. We will be the chorus, speak with one voice, reveal feelings for the group and make a new history.
