CHOREOGRAPHIC WORK:
COWBOY
"Not sure what John Wayne would have thought of it all..." - The Courier Mail, Phil Brown.
“It’s audacious and life affirming as well as just plain exhausting to watch.” - Matilda Awards
Awards:
2022 Matilda Awards:
The Lord Mayors award for Best New Australian Work Best Sound Design
Performance History:
Brisbane Festival / Metro Arts
TanzZeit, Berlin
AGITART Figueres Festival MOU, Spain
Gladstone Entertainment and Convention Centre (GECC)
Dance Massive Site Responsive Showcase, Melbourne
Credits:
Producer: THE FARM
Choreographer/Performer: Michael Smith
Sound Composition: Ben Ely
Sound Design: Anna Whitaker
Lighting / Production: Chloe Ogilive
Producer: The Farm
Co-producer: Liesel Zink
Mentor: Gavin Webber
Dramaturgy: Gavin Webber, Marty Coutts, Liesel Zink
Images: Anne Moffett, Abbotsford Convent
Videography: The Jump TV, AGITART Figueres Festival MO
“It’s audacious and life affirming as well as just plain exhausting to watch.” - Matilda Awards
Awards:
2022 Matilda Awards:
The Lord Mayors award for Best New Australian Work Best Sound Design
Performance History:
Brisbane Festival / Metro Arts
TanzZeit, Berlin
AGITART Figueres Festival MOU, Spain
Gladstone Entertainment and Convention Centre (GECC)
Dance Massive Site Responsive Showcase, Melbourne
Credits:
Producer: THE FARM
Choreographer/Performer: Michael Smith
Sound Composition: Ben Ely
Sound Design: Anna Whitaker
Lighting / Production: Chloe Ogilive
Producer: The Farm
Co-producer: Liesel Zink
Mentor: Gavin Webber
Dramaturgy: Gavin Webber, Marty Coutts, Liesel Zink
Images: Anne Moffett, Abbotsford Convent
Videography: The Jump TV, AGITART Figueres Festival MO
“I am deeply consumed,
I am deeply committed,
I am becoming
a Cowboy.”
COWBOY is an interactive, solo contemporary-dance work that unpacks ones ability to have a complete, genuine and meaningful experience as an imagined self. An original sound-score composed by Ben Ely transforms our surroundings into that of a Western Film.
COWBOY utilises its performance space to create both intimate settings and vast, open landscapes with a free-roaming audience. The work is site 'adaptable', tailoring the imagined reality to both indoor and outdoor locations, day or night. Michael operates the show from the inside, using a bluetooth remote to cue tracks and sound effects that transform active audience-members into saloon doors, brawlers, pianists, and other instruments of the Western world. Cowboy is poignantly humorous yet sensitive, where Michael's attempt for self-realisation and connection resonates beyond the fantasy.
COWBOY was created with The Farm as supported by Arts Queensland.
COWBOY utilises its performance space to create both intimate settings and vast, open landscapes with a free-roaming audience. The work is site 'adaptable', tailoring the imagined reality to both indoor and outdoor locations, day or night. Michael operates the show from the inside, using a bluetooth remote to cue tracks and sound effects that transform active audience-members into saloon doors, brawlers, pianists, and other instruments of the Western world. Cowboy is poignantly humorous yet sensitive, where Michael's attempt for self-realisation and connection resonates beyond the fantasy.
COWBOY was created with The Farm as supported by Arts Queensland.
"From surfing trains and taming horses to wandering the desert, Cowboy holds a deeper inquiry into the existence of human persona beyond fantasy. By committing entirely to the iconography of a cowboy, I seek to expose desires and vulnerabilities that exist in our pursuit to form identity." - Michael Smith
HIGHLIGHT VIDEOS
SHORT HIGHLIGHT
BRISBANE FESTIVAL 2020
With special thanks to:
