Local dance and theatre artist Helen Duncan’s new experimental show Cabaret of Calm comes to Geelong later this month. She spoke to Matt Hewson about her work and the experiences that have shaped her creative practice.
Local creative Helen Duncan has always danced to her own beat.
Her work centres on dance and theatre with a strong focus on community involvement, but Helen was a latecomer to both disciplines.
Growing up on remote sheep stations on Yamaji and Tjiwari Country in Western Australia’s North West and Goldfields regions, she said her childhood “offered a very unique upbringing”.
“In my view my childhood was certainly sprinkled with dysfunction, but ultimately life in the outback offered an incredibly free-range lifestyle where we were entirely responsible for creating our own entertainment, whether that was causing trouble in the shearing shed or building makeshift treehouses out of whatever scrap was laying at the tip,” Helen said.
“I’ve no doubt the isolation and self-reliance has influenced my approach to my arts practice and probably has been very useful given how much resilience you need to thrive in the performing arts landscape in Australia.”
Helen’s first encounter with dance didn’t come until she was 22 and studying drama and teaching at university, but the experience was transformative.
“I went to uni to study… to become a drama and English teacher and a job at a dance school came up to teach drama,” she said.
“So I applied and got that job and they said, look, we like your teaching style, would you stay and learn some ballet with us so you can teach ballet? And I said, for sure.
“The first ballet class I took was a very emotional experience – I get a bit emotional recalling it – but the penny dropped and I realised that I’d found the thing that I felt was missing. I’d found a vocation.”
From then on Helen dedicated herself to dance, training in classes where she was the only adult.
Two years later she was accepted into the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).
“It was pretty phenomenal to have even gotten in, and I was very behind… I was extremely behind,” she said.
“All my peers had been dancing since they were children. But I fought my way through it and honestly, the training is so exceptional there.
“It was up to 50 hours a week for four years and that’s enough to turn anyone into a professional. So I was very, very lucky there.”
Since graduating from WAAPA with a bachelor of arts (honours) in dance Helen has had a diverse career as an independent artist, working across Australia and in the United Kingdom.
Her original works have been featured at Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals, she has driven initiatives such as Creative Behaviours Dance Collective, produced fashion shows and managed projects for Geelong Arts Centre (GAC) and Deakin University.
When Helen and her partner arrived in Geelong some eight years ago she opened her own dance studio, Adult Ballet Studio.
As it did for many artists, COVID-19 had a big impact on Helen’s practice. She opted to close Adult Ballet due to the pressures of the pandemic, but received a commission from the City of Greater Geelong to deliver the site-specific Micro-Moves project in 2021.
Using QR codes, film and digital technologies, the Micro-Moves team created a series of films that could be watched on people’s phones at the locations they were filmed.
However, the closure of her dance studio “left quite a big bruise” and she and her family moved back to Western Australia.
“When the borders opened to Western Australia, I went back; that’s where I’m originally from and we moved to a regional coastal city and it was lovely,” she said.
“But ultimately, after two years we just missed Geelong. We missed our friends and we missed access to all the amazing arts and cultural things that are happening here at the moment, so we made the choice to move back.”
Her latest work, Cabaret of Calm, comes to the Geelong public as part of GAC’s Creative Engine Launchpad initiative, which aims to create pathways to help artists develop and present new works.
Cabaret of Calm, which Helen describes as a “light-hearted, immersive experience” using theatre, contemporary dance and cabaret humour, explores wellbeing, self-care and trusting one’s own innate understanding of what they need to be well.
“What we know we will benefit from can often be made more complicated or overridden by the chatter of social media and the power of influencers and the increasingly powerful wellness economy,” she said.
“This work seeks – with a bit of self-deprecation and humour – to remind us that for a lot of us, returning to ourselves and what we know to be right and true for ourselves is often what’s best and often what’s simplest.”
The work is informed by Helen’s personal experiences, both as someone coming to the world of dance as an adult and as a new mother.
“Starting dance at 22, I think it really introduced me to what it felt like to be an adult participating in an activity like dance for the first time and knowing I wanted to do it but understanding that my body was not doing what I wanted it to do,” she said.
“And also that journey, of having to upskill yourself as an adult learner and the sort of gentleness and forgiveness you need to offer yourself to piece that together.”
When Helen became a mother seven years ago she noticed a “huge contradiction” in the advice she was constantly given.
“You’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first, you’ve got to take care of yourself first; you’ve got to make sure you’re at your best so that you can be your best for others,” she said.
“But… it wasn’t clear to me how that was supposed to be attained. And the messages I did receive were all these suggestions and “life hacks” that would prove invaluable to me to show me how I could create that balance and how I can find that self-care and how I can find space for myself.
“But it always was investing in something financially or investing in something with time, of which I had none, with a newborn by my side.
“And that exists I think in a lot of areas; when you’re injured, again, there’s all these suggestions for how to improve. But at some point, these improvements potentially cause us more harm than calm, either because we don’t think we’re doing the suggestions right or it takes too much time or we have to make an investment or we buy something.
“So for me it’s about looking at those contradictions and really questioning who these messages are serving. I suspect it’s not me.”
Cabaret of Calm is at GAC on Saturday, June 22. Visit geelongartscentre.org.au/whats-on/launchpad-2024 for tickets and more information.
