First things first; RUCKUS are completely and utterly awesome. Check them out here  RUCKUS

RUCKUS are a team of 6 dancers/movers/slapstick comedians/actors, and have flown across from Sydney Australia alongside choreographer  Dean Walsh, director Alison Richardson and dancer Suzy Dunne alongside all camera and production crew, who are all doing an awesome job.

I have had the most brilliant of weeks, a lot of activities which have been lead by Dean, who has choreographed the likes of DV8 before. What I loved most about the movement based tasks was the lack of focus on how to make them inclusive. He appeared to be just doing what he does best (and let me say he does this pretty well!) and it just happened to be with people with disabilities.

Alison managed to get a whole lot of funding together to support the exchange to Epic Arts in Cambodia and she also got the group together, which I personally am now so glad about, so I cannot even imagine to feel how the rest of the group feel about this too.

The piece that is being created is called ‘Speed of Life’ and will premiere in Sydney in May.

‘Speed of life’ is a collaborative and exciting new theatre work that brings together RUCKUS and Epic Encounters, two ground breaking performance ensembles with disability who are based in Sydney and Australia. Speed of Life examines notions of time, motion and how the inherent rhythm of your hometown underpins how you negotiate life.’

The time spent together here in Kampot acts as rehearsal and development time, allowing both groups to discuss ideas of time; Do you think time moves fast or slow? Would you like to stop time or change how it feels?

It’s been interesting to hear how time applies to everyone differently. What I enjoy is the fact that time is literally the same for everyone; we are experiencing exactly the same time, however this feels different for each and every one of us.

Creative experiments were done with sand timers, and therefore sand, as well as opportunity to make noise through a microphone. This could be stories or singing and there were instruments there too. It was encouraged to use time as the inspiration for this. Dancers behind would be moving in collaboration with the sounds the musician were making, reacting to this as well as another solo and sand player in the space. So many ideas came out. And the time limit of 3 minutes at each section allowed you to play with each and have no time to prepare or think about the next.

Playing with speed, whether that be moving or dance was played with a lot. About two metres space was given to walk through in 10 minutes, which was really rather difficult but great all the same.

Film crew captured all exploration and this will be made into a video that will be part of the final performance in May.

I will post more about it all soon, including site specific work that happened during RUCKUS’ time in Cambodia. But for now, I just feel so incredibly grateful to have been able to work with the Ruckus team. They are truly amazing, and the work that they are doing is of such a high standard. They are truly an inspiration to us all (Ruckus members and the choreographer/director/video/dancer wonderful people too)!