As a collective of artists with and without disability, Restless Dance Theatre spotlights what unites us all as people. Playing during Brisbane Festival, Private View is the company’s most intimate work yet.

Conceived by long-time creative producer Roz Hervey to challenge taboos around sexuality and disability, Private View steps behind closed doors to explore sex and love in a series of vignettes capturing desire, dreams and despair.

Artistic director Michelle Ryan says the show will “make you laugh, it’ll make you cry and it’ll make you want to dance”.

Ryan has helmed the Adelaide-based troupe since 2013. The subject of Meryl Tankard’s documentary Michelle’s Story draws on her experience as a world-class artist and subsequently as a disabled woman living with multiple sclerosis.

Tapping into universal human themes and experiences is part of the reason for the company’s success, as demonstrated in the award-winning Intimate Space, a tour through hidden parts of a working hotel, and the 2022 Brisbane Festival show Guttered, set in a bowling alley.

“You invite an audience in, you charm them, you make them laugh,” Ryan says. “Then you add something that hopefully makes them question their perception of disability and judgment by realising that we’re all humans together. So, let’s just celebrate that, rather than putting labels on everyone.”

Accordingly, the company states simply that members may have physical, intellectual or psychological disabilities. And after 15 years as part of the Restless family in a range of capacities, self-declared “proud disabled woman” Bonnie Williams has now broken down a barrier faced by all dancers, resuming performing aged 37 when she “thought I was past my due-date”.

So her solo, staged in a bathroom, is imbued with the added emotional layer of being told through the eyes of an older woman.

“Although sexuality is threaded through it’s also about intimacy and relationships, love and wanting love, and loss as well,” Williams says. “My scene is about the breakdown of a relationship or losing someone really, really important but then rebuilding herself.”

While the artists draw on personal experiences, their Private View characters and stories are fictionalised.

After working extensively with Restless over the past five years as artistic associate and rehearsal director, choreographing Private View was a natural extension for Brisbane-bred award-winning artist Larissa McGowan.

“Because I know all of the dancers so well and have spent so much time training everyone, I really know how they want to express themselves, both physically and in the stories they want to tell,” McGowan says.

“We had an intimacy coach come in so that together we were able to shape something that felt very personal for them but also very safe. The mode of this performance is very different from most of the other shows that we’ve done, and it does feel more dance theatre.”

The work’s domestic set-piece furnishings have also sculpted the movement stylistically, she adds.

The vibrant retro vintage design aesthetic by Renate Henschke (whose credits include Game of Thrones and Vikings) is reflected in the songs composed and performed live by singer Carla Lippis.

“I took a lot of inspiration from Serge Gainsbourg and ‘60s French pop because I wanted a touch of lush and for it to be playful and joyful like that sound had,” Lippis observes.

Seen around Australia in music tribute show 27 Club, Lippis dubs herself “a grenade with lungs” so it’s no surprise Roz Hervey considers Lippis the work’s electricity, serving as a voyeuristic conduit in guiding the audience through the work’s four rooms.

Private View plays Brisbane Powerhouse, September 18-21, brisbanepowerhouse.org 

brisbanefestival.com.au

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