Deep Soulful Sweats
Ongoing project with Rebecca Jensen visit our website for more info
Collaborating with a vast team of dancers, dj’s, designers, artists and organisations including:
Perth Festival 2024, Homo Novus Latvia, ANTI Festival Kuopio Finland 2023, Ian Potter Museum 2019, Castlemaine Festival 2019, MPavilion 2018 and 2021, Brisbane Festival 2016, PICA 2017, Next Wave 2014, FOLA 2014, Dark MOFO 2014/15, Chunky Move (ongoing)
DSS Leaders include: Natalie Abbott, Jennifer Ma, Shian Law, James Andrews, Faasu Afoa-Purcell, Annabelle Balharry, Kelly Beneforti, Lydia Connolly-Hiatt, Rachel Coulson, Sheridan Gerrard, Angela Goh, Hillary Goldsmith, Harrison Hall, Amrita Hepi, Ben Hurly, Zahra Killeen-Chance, Madeline Krenek, Claire Leske, Milo Love, Rennie McDougall, Ashleigh McLellan, Janine Proost, Emily Ranford, Emma Riches, Emily Robinson, Carly Sheppard, Oonagh Slater, Frankie Snowdon, Luigi Vescio, Bella Waru, Timothy Walsh, Geoffrey Watson and many more local and international dancers
In the thick of an unfolding choreography, ritual, rave, contemporary dance class, DSS incrementally and exponentially encourages participants to let go and exorcise through exercise.
Deep Soulful Sweats is a collaborative and participatory event led by dance artists Sarah Aiken and Rebecca Jensen, founded on the Winter Solstice 2013 with Natalie Abbott and Janine Proost. The project has seen many incarnations, from stripped back movement focused events for 40-60 participants to creating large-scale spectacles for upward of 300 participants diverse in age and experience.
Deep Soulful Sweats is participatory contemporary art, its exercise, its community creating. Ecstatic and inclusive, it's a joyful, surprising and exhilarating experience for anyone and everyone. Together Rebecca and Sarah have a long history of creating experimental choreography and performance in theatres, galleries, community, film, music & site responsive contexts. Their work has been described as formally reckless, slipping between codified forms and unbridled invention. Their freeform maximalist style has no rules, amassing multiple images in a torrent of references, satirical, sincere, absurd and unapologetic.
"Both of these works [OVERWORLD and Underworld] were remarkable for whole-heartedly embracing a radically feminist methodology just as a new wave of feminism was resurging in pop culture.
Today, they seem definitional, capstone works of the emerging generation of Australian choreographers that has supplanted years of po-faced abstract minimalism”
Jana Perkovic The Age 2019
Since 2010 Rebecca and Sarah have produced world-class, experimental choreography, presented in Latvia, Finland, Canada, Italy, France, New Zealand and more locally at Arts Centre Melbourne, Dance Massive, MPavilion, Keir Choreographic Awards, Melbourne Knowledge Week, Next Wave, Dark MOFO, Brisbane Festival and Castlemaine State Festival.
Deep Soulful Sweats has been presented extensively around the country and has grown a loyal following for its shape-shifting events, encouraging people from all walks of life to step out of their thinking mind and into their bodies. Events can be tailored to fit a range of contexts, ages, spaces and budgets. From a wholesome adventurous kids show to adventurous 18+, town halls to stadiums or a full family affair in the park. Facilitated by a rotating combination of choreographer’s dancers and DJ’s, you are divided into your elements based on your star signs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water).
“one of the most moving pieces of dance ... blurs the line between performance and documentation, using an onstage camera to create, minimise, expand and extrapolate her image in real time. she critiques the constant performance of identity demanded by techno-capitalism and asks us to indulge in our own insignificance” - Anador Walsh The Saturday Paper
"a mesmerising journey [...] so many layers to this performance that the overall effect was like an explosion; bodies and images cascading and multiplying, like meteorites.
This piece speaks about the commodification of emotion, the monetisation of relationships and the banality of contemporary life in ways that are novel and fresh. With smatterings of Dada and delicious irony, Make Your Life Count seemed to be profoundly received by the audience, who reacted with laughing, gasping and an arousing round of applause at the end. The trajectory of the show felt astral as frames of reference (literal and metaphorical) kept shifting and moving like the prodigal doors in Alice in Wonderland. It felt like tumbling into a rabbit hole of sorts where the view was oddly familiar yet full of surprises, as Aiken undulated across the stage, playing with the projections to a startling revelation in the final moments." - Leila Lois, Arts Hub
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“Her body becomes a sculptural object… beautifully wrought, an exercise in simplicity and innovation” – Varia Karipoff, RealTime
“Aiken’s work is a delight with its own personality, fully engaged with wit and visual verbal wordplay” – Liza Dezfouli, Australian Stage
“…definitional, capstone works of the emerging generation of Australian choreographers” – Jana Perkovic, The Age
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. Development supported by Lucy Guerin Inc/WXYZ space residency.