Installations at SEAM 2009
Spatial Phrases – Sue Healey’s The Door, The Chair, The Bed and The Stair
Without a doubt, Sue Healey is one of the most innovative and prolific Australian independent dance makers of the last twenty years.

She is acclaimed as both choreographer and filmmaker and has won a host of prestigious national and international awards. Her new work, The Door, The Chair, The Bed and The Stair, marks a departure for her and sees her move into installation practice. 

Commissioned by Critical Path and presented as part of SEAM 2009: Spatial Phrases, The Door, The Chair, The Bed and The Stair features 4 large screens suspended in the air, with choreographed actions projected onto them, flowing from screen to screen. Point of departure for the work was Healey’s fascination with questions surrounding how humans inhabit architectural forms: How do architectural settings give a distinct profile to a character? In which way does architecture amplify emotion? What is the symbolic dimension to space and image?

At the heart of The Door, The Chair, The Bed and The Stair are four short filmic explorations choreographed by Healey and digitally scaled by Adam Synnot to fit the different sizes of the screens. Shot in sumptuous black and white and danced by Healey’s long-term collaborator, dancer Nalina Wait, each instalment plays with the spectator’s perception of space in regards to one of four well-known architectural forms – door, chair, bed and stairs. For The Stair section, for example, Healey has reversed footage of Wait languidly melting down a set of stairs so it looks as if she is magically defying gravity, slowly floating upstairs. The Bed is shot from above, with Wait’s legs jerkily etching forwards underneath a white sheet. Her head is not in frame, giving this section an eerie, disembodied edge. In The Door, Nalina enters through a door, blocking the view to the room she has just left. She then peers back into that room, re-enters and eventually disappears into it again. Inside and outside are blurred, the door is transformed into a two-way threshold. Last but not least, The Chair has Wait artfully climb a chair, in a way that for a brief moment human and architectural form morph into one.

As part of Healey’s installation, the four separate pieces of footage are related to each other through cinematic montage, at times using split screens and reconfiguring them in various constellations. The fact the edited versions are projected onto four different screens results in the spectators having to make decisions as to how they position themselves when viewing the work. This further emphasizes the complex relationship between film, architecture and the body. Exploring the nexus between these three distinct components, it is not a surprise that Healey’s artistic team also includes an architect, her brother Mark. It’s the first time the Healey siblings are collaborating on a project, incorporating their spatial enquiry and expertise of their respective professional fields. Bringing his architectural knowledge to the work, Mark was instrumental in informing Healey’s choice in regards to the placement of the screens in the space.

The Door, the Chair, The Bed and The Stair is clearly a highlight among the commissioned installations presented at SEAM 2009: Spatial Phrases. Its viewing cannot be recommended highly enough. Anyone interested in contemporary dance, installation art, film and architecture will find the work exciting, thought-provoking and poetic.

Martin del  Amo