Director, Kate Denborough, co-founded KAGE almost 15 years ago with fellow VCA graduate, Gerard Van Dyck. Kate says the idea to start the company came about because hey wanted to create dance that at the time there was no other outlet for. “We have a really similar dance aesthetic and sense of humour. So we decided to start our own company and we kept creating works where no one got paid till finally we got our first grant,” says Kate.
For Kate, starting a dance theatre company and earning a living has had its challenges, “It’s been a slow and steady progression. Ultimately in any art form, you want to keep making bigger and better work and a work of scale and significance. I suppose that’s the challenge these days where when we were young and starting out, we didn’t mind if we didn’t get paid, we did it for the love of it. But as you get older you begin to realise you have to put bread on the table.”
Now that KAGE is an established and well respected dance company, Kate is glad all the hard work has paid off, “It’s great that we are still going because it’s not an easy industry to sustain. It’s about maintaining your artistic will and desire to produce the work you want to make.”
The idea to collaborate with Michael Leunig, stemmed from Kate’s lifelong admiration for the artist. “I’ve grown up being surrounded by images from his books and cartoons and my parents had a copy of The Penguin Leunig on the coffee table,” says Kate. “Since moving from Canberra to Melbourne, I have continued to be an admirer of his work. I went to listen to him speak at a writers conference and was really struck by his incredible nature and personality, he’s just an incredibly interesting man.”
Kate has an enormous respect for Leunig’s ability to force Australians to look at themselves honestly. “He is able to combine beautiful skill and artistry with a wicked sense of humour. He holds up a mirror to all of us and our thoughts and our views and I think he’s very brave. Sometimes there is a bit of controversy over his cartoons, but I think people forget that he is essentially being a conduit for everyone and he’s creating artwork for provocation, which is so incredibly important.”
Like so many of Michael’s cartoons, Look Right Through Me is about a man living a solitary life, trying to find a connection with the world around him. “I like the idea of the sense of this person being rather invisible. The lead character in this work feels that he has absolutely no visibility. He has just become one of the masses within corporate life and he’s lost his sense of self. So its this idea of just looking right through someone and just brushing past,” says Kate.
“A lot of the work is quite of hard hitting so we have also included some light relief. Michael’s work often deals with quite dark subject matter so there is some darkness in the performance. Like Michael said, don’t shy away from darkness, there is darkness in all of us, so long as there is a counterpoint then it is necessary.”
Though there are many poetically dark moments in the work, Kate feels the audience will be left with an underlying hope. “By the end of the work this man finds the sense of connection he’s been longing for with both people and with himself. Michael is so into the idea of connection, living in the moment and paying attention to the small seemingly insignificant things. The work is about reigniting a sense of purpose and a lust for life after feeling lost and completely broken,” says Kate.
Working with Michael has been an amazing experience for Kate and the KAGE team, “He’s been just wonderful to work with because he’s so supportive. He’s basically like a sounding board as he is very good at articulating what he sees. I like it because he’s always got his hand in it, like a painter, changing the colour, changing the tone. It’s great having him sit next to me in rehearsal and to have the laughter. Like so much of his work, he really enjoys the absurdity.”
Even though they work in different mediums, Kate found that Michael’s abilities as a painter were also relevant to dance and performance. “Having his perspective on this art form is quite refreshing. He’s instinctive and intuitive and also has a really great eye for things in a space. We tried to soak up as much of it as we could whilst he was there,” says Kate.
Ultimately, Look Right Through Me is not a literal translation of Michael’s cartoons, but rather a sense of the spirit of him, “I hope we can do justice to Michael’s works. The last thing I want to do is underestimate his work.”
