Context Is Everything

• 2018 Development with BrandX leading to a showing of the work in development.

• 2021 Development with Critical Path leading to a performance in March Dance.

• 2021 Selected for the Made in Sydney Sydney Fringe Fesitval program.

• Due to Covid-19, the 2021 performance has been postponed to 2022.

This 90-minute “solo” looks back to some very diverse dance and contemporary performance practices in Sydney across the last 30 years. It maps, re-embodies and re-contextualises aspects of Dean’s 30-year commitment to dance, contemporary performance, teaching and research practices, whilst discussing other events (local and global) that influenced and, eventually changed keys aspects of dysfunctional and discriminatory systems of exclusion and oppression. These stories (physical and spoken) extend across several diverse human communities and natural environments – including influences from working across Australia, the UK, Europe, Japan and the US.

‘Remote Control’ becomes ‘Context Is Everything’:

In 2018, with a 2-week residency support granted from East Sydney Community and Arts Centre (ESCAC), Dean created a “performed archive” - then called Remote Control - across 2 nights as part of his archiving process for a major community project called, Dancing Sydney: Mapping Movements, Performing Histories (Dancing Sydney for short). That 2 (and a bit) hour presentation, whilst incredibly raw (unfunded) was very well-received by those who attended.

Dean’s interests to develop that presentation into a more refined performance work, as the “icing on the cake” for addition to his archives (explained in more detail below), was very much encouraged by his peers who attended Remote Control. Critics and audience agreed that the work had a promising premise, a lot of unique and important aspects to its content that map a less conventional dance and choreographic practice - his own and others - across the last 3 decades in Sydney.

“Walsh is a mesmerising ,charismatic, sinuous and slinky performer: the actual dance segments are just splendid” - Lynn Lancaster, Nov 2018, Sydney Arts Guide (reviewing first staged development, Remote Control)

Dean is presenting this reworked and refined version as a 90-minute “performed archive” and has already commenced designing the set, costuming and choreographic scores in the lead up to his 3-weeks fulltime at Critical Path studio, between 22nd Feb and 14th March at Critical Path. The work premieres on 12th and 13th of March. This iteration is being supported by Critical Path and produced by Dean and Andrew’s interdisciplinary company/community platform, Weird Nest for a performance in March Dance 2021.

In 2021 Dean celebrates his 30th year as a dance and contemporary performance artist, teacher and researcher.

Some more context:

Dean has been engaged by the Dancing Sydney project - a collaboration between leading contemporary dance and performance academics from UNSW, Uni of Sydney, Macquarie Uni and the NSW State Library, as well as Critical Path (an internationally-renowned leading Australian centre for choreographic research and development).

They have engaged 12 senior, Sydney-based, contemporary dance and performance practitioners who have more than 20 years of influential professional choreographic practice in Sydney, have acquired national and international reputations as artists who have extended and stretched the edges of choreographic practice, including held perceptions of what dance is, can be and the areas of socio-political, even environmental, content it can embody and communicate.

Throughout Dean’s career he has ‘stretched the edges’ of choreographic form and content, and doing so by remaining as authentic to himself and the ways in which he sees, thinks and experiences life through an autistic/ADHD and “traumatized survivor” lens. These include participating in mainstream and subcultural platforms of dance, contemporary performance, queer performance, research into marine sub-aquatic systems and disability arts access and inclusion.

So many other ‘voices’ are also being archived in the Dancing Sydney project as a result of our own archiving - dancers, performers, other choreographers, teachers, mentors, venue managers, myriad agencies, researchers, producers and even our audiences (and critics) responses to our work. Dancing Sydney: Mapping Movements, Performing Histories is a huge community event.

As part of Dancing Sydney, these artists have each been asked to archive all their materials, collected over the course of their careers. For Dean, this has meant collating hundreds of different articles, at least 22 more substantial choreographic processes, significant and ongoing research projects, digitizing 25 “old school” VHS tapes and 130 mini DVs tapes of his work across 30 years. No small task!

Themes Dean’s works have explored across 3 decades include:

• domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse and neglect,

• relationships with specific members of his own family in the aftermath of such transgressions,

• social and familial homophobia,

• various embodied dissections of Australian “masculinity”

• war and its intergenerational traumatic aftermath

• queer identities, genders, aesthetics and lived experiences

• HIV/AIDS and the devastating influence on his own life, friends and the queer community and our friends,

• notions of social hierarchy (class)

• challenging held perceptions of “ability”

• marine environmental conservation ideas - stemming from aligning his scuba diving (as an environmentally immersive embodied practice that embraces research into ‘extended cognition’ theorems) with his dance, choreographic and teaching practices.