For many years, I have been preoccupied with rituals of preparation—with pre-performance routines as performances in themselves. I have staged these ideas on several occasions, including in my boxing and football performances in South Africa, where I explored how athletes prepare before a match and how dancers prepare before entering the stage.

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Over time, I developed a habit of not letting such investigations go. Instead, I continued to work on them privately, beyond the theatre, sustaining intimate studio-lab practices. One such work, In Preparation, began in collaboration with dancer and dance scientist Emma Redding in 2009 and was first performed at the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science conference in Washington, D.C. in 2011. Several iterations followed. These experimental works were shaped through dialogue with an array of collaborators, including medical doctor Sara Chin, sound artist Neil Luck, dramaturge Maryann Hushlak, filmmaker Monica Alcazar, sports scientist Matt Wyon, and dance scientist Sonia Rafferty.

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After twelve years of working together—on and off, and across different countries—Emma and I developed a shared language of physical preparation, drawing together autobiographical notes, poetic gestures, and materials from a long history of collaborative performance-making.

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Our final studio rehearsal in Melbourne in 2023 was spontaneously captured on film by filmmaker Andrew O’Keefe and later accompanied by an original sound composition by Mark Pollard. The film traces Emma’s persistence in the act of training—labouring and fatiguing—interweaving fitness practice with moments of intimacy and vulnerability.

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What remains from these encounters, for now, is this final film: a trace of that long process and, unexpectedly, a significant precursor to my current work on gyms.

In the link below, a research statement by the film maker, accompanied the film.
To access the item, please click here. 

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E-0923 Credits
Dancer & Dance Scientist: Emma Redding 
Choreographer: Athina Vahla 
Film Maker: Andrew O'Keefe
Sound: Mark Pollard
Video filmed at Victorian College of Arts, Melbourne