Island Bride

The Island Bride is a shape-shifting, anthropo-scenic figure in the landscape, acknowledging human intervention in changing climates, geological and oceanic conditions. A phantasmatic creature she appears in the three vaka (tribal districts) of Rarotonga island responding to the specific terrain with her movements: dragging her looped and plasticated nets, skirt and train across field, beach and cancerous concrete. The Island Bride is a postcolonial construction maternal/virginal and mythical/visceral who resembles the ghost nets found washed up on pacific island beaches, which, left at sea by fisherman, entrap sea life and filter trash. Three local dancers, of varying ages and genders, move in three differing landscapes, responding to particular site conditions. An abjectile, the Island Bride references the Deleuzean objectile as a ‘theatre of matter’ and develops Hannah’s notion of body-object-events where performer, garments and space are integrated and contiguous. Working with the crocheted biomorphs of Australian artist, Linda Erceg, performance designer Dorita Hannah invited local business woman June Baudinet (also the first Miss Cook Islands), kite-surfer and pilates instructor Brynn Acheson, and professional performer, Henry Ah-Foo Taripo (HENZART), to respond to an allocated place on the island (Makea Palace Grounds, Muri Lagoon and Sheraton ruin), as a means of leading the audience from one site to another. The performance proposal was double-blind refereed