After an award-winning season in 2016, this new version of RESTORE by Australian performance artist Renae Shadler is a time-accelerated journey into past, present and future. Presented in an international double-bill with the Australian premiere of LARA, a solo by Austrian dancer and choreographer Mirjam Sögner.

RESTORE is inspired by a residency in an Icelandic fishing village where an active volcano capped with a glacier lay dormant, Shadler is compelled by Snæfellsjökull (the volcano/glacier) to reconsider her fast-paced 'go go go' lifestyle. In a world where being busy feels like success and nothingness instills fear, she finds herself hurtling towards the realisation of an already-imagined future. Dance, theatre and design are overlaid to create multifaceted images of whale migrations, glaciers and the digital realm as Shadler shape-shifts her way through a myriad of worlds with skillful precision, inviting audiences into this intimate journey.

Developed across three continents and winner of the Melbourne Fringe 2016 Market Ready Award and nominated for Best Performance, RESTORE was recently redeveloped through Punctum’s Seedpod program with movement collaborator Mirjam Sögner (AT).

"This is an elegantly executed performance with stunning visuals and music, while Shadler, armed with a gentle smile and knowing eyes, proves herself to be a fascinating and enchanting performer that you can’t take your eyes off". – RESTORE 2016, Aussie Theatre 2016

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After an extensive European tour and being selected for Aerowaves 2016, LARA comes to Australia for the first time. LARA takes the pixelated movement patterns of early computer game characters as its starting point to explore digitally altered physicalities. Mirjam Sögner translates the unnatural qualities and glitchy image errors of digital avatars back onto her own body, which produces an uncanny hybrid. Imitating the imitation, she creates a physical body seemingly trapped in the digital realm. As our digital and physical realities grow together, this solo offers a bodily response to our changing experience of the world.

“Moments like these remind me again why I go to the theatre. ‘LARA’ is [...] a successful and precisely worked movement study, which strangely touches me as a spectator and yet also alienates me.” – Johanna Withelm

VENUE: Dancehouse, 150 Princes Street, North Carlton, VIC 3054
DATES: 11 (Opening), 12 (post-show Q&A), 13 May 2018
TIMES: 7:30pm, Sun 5:00pm (90min with interval)
TICKETS: $28 Full, $23 Concession

To book tickets please click here or ring the Dancehouse box office on 03 9347 2860 

Renae and Mirjam will also be conducting a movement masterclass at Dancehouse on Saturday 21 April. 

RESTORE is supported by Besen Family Foundation, Yarra City Council and developed as part of Punctum's Seedpod program and The Freezer residency in Iceland, with friendly support from Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte. Mirjam Sögner’s travel is supported by the Goethe-Institut in Berlin.

More information:

Dancehouse

RESTORE // LARA Facebook

RESTORE trailer

LARA trailer