Encountering With is a durational dancing installation and experiment of concurrent action and coming together.

In 2021, both Emily and Ebony made dance film works informed by their long-term embodied improvisational practices: Under the Open Sky: A Duet for One, informed by Emily’s Honours research project and almost a decade of practice with her collaborator, Joey Lehrer; and CARE DANCE, informed by Ebony’s several years of practising as part of their doctoral research project. Although distinct works and practices, Under the Open Sky and CARE DANCE share overlapping themes of improvisational modes of listening, attending, being with and taking care.

In Encountering With, Emily and Ebony perform alongside and in-relation to their respective film works side-by-side, for three hours. A rolling and emerging encounter, they aim to re-imagine their respective practices in-relation to themselves and each other. Through modes of rest, action, allowance and time spent, where might their individual practices meet? Where might they find moments of encountering, relationality and intersections between them?

Created and performed by Emily Bowman and Ebony Muller

Photography: Devika Bilimoria

Performed as part of Inertia at Dancehouse, Melbourne, December 2021.

Supported by Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographer’s Program.

Performed on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation.