The House 2023
Support material
100 STORIES. 100 CAPES.
100 Stories 100 Capes is a work created over 3 years with 100 women across Australia. In 2020, during our first lockdown, 100 women were sent the materials to make a red cape to be worn by a future girl.
While confined to their houses, the young women of The House interviewed our 100 cape-makers: cross-age women from remote, regional, metropolitan and urban communities in every Australian state.
In February 2022 these interviews were listened to and edited, ready to be developed into an hour long composition, to be heard in October 2022. The developing work will be designed for audiences to navigate their stories, housed within red capes and interspersed with music and stories.
COMPOSERS OF THIS PROJECT:
Hear a composition example track from the 100 STORIES. 100 CAPES. project
See the score for the above composition
F E M I N A C O N T R O L L A T A M A C H I N A.
An experimentation of female vocal textures exploring the possibilities, fears and potential threats surrounding the emerging epoch of artificial intelligence, deep-fake technology and the potentially omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent algorithms of global social-media and technology companies.
Six emerging artists will collaborate with Donna Hewitt and Danielle O’Keefe to build skills, interrogate a concept and create two contrasting vocal works that harness the creative possibilities of emerging-technologies.
COLLABORATION WITH RISE – CANADA PROJECT
• Led by Dr. Eldad Tsabary and funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (SSHRC), Reflective Iterative Scenario Enactments (RISE) is a Le PARC based 5-year
(2020-2025) research-creation project designed to enact and investigate cataclysmic
scenarios in 10 mini-operas.
• Various narratives from among humanity’s greatest fears (pandemics, ecological disasters,
economic collapse, political strife and warfare, technological disasters, surveillance and loss of
human rights, cosmic disasters, etc.) will be dramatised in the opera medium and studied
collaboratively. The creative process will involve critical reflection sessions in which the
research-creation team and members of the public will freely debate emergent matters
related to the narrative of the mini-operas and their impact on humanity, challenges to the
opera medium, collaborative strategies among researcher and creators from diverse fields
and career stages, and production-centred topics.
R E V E R E N C E
An Opera for Piano and Voice by Rose Riebl
Composed and performed by Rose Riebl, directed by Danielle O’Keefe and presented by ‘The House that Dan Built’, REVERENCE is part Requiem, part modern opera; and something entirely new. This singular and intense debut work combines piano, percussion, 6 solo voices and a chorus to create an emotionally charged, bold and layered work.
REVERENCE reshapes the traditional way we have come to experience opera or staged Requiems, and instead it is a journey together into the dark: an immersive, contemporary work, drawing on classical, post-classical, pop and ambient musical styles and using both classical and extended vocal techniques.
Inspired by Anne Carson’s translation of Antigone, this is a story of grief told through song. REVERENCE presents an opportunity to return to art as catharsis, communion and an expression of our shared loss. If we take grief to be a singular experience and mourning something which is processed in the collective, this work brings us all into the same room. From composer, through performers, to the audience and back again, this work is a circle. The experience of grief, mourning are shared and therefore, perhaps, alleviated.
FIRST CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT - SYDNEY 2022
AKIN REGIONAL SONGWRITING WORKSHOPS
We have been running AKIN workshops for 5 years and held workshops with over 1400 girls across regional NSW. We have created a legacy project with girls over 20/21 to ensure song writing and composition can continue after we leave. In 2021 we started our first monthly online sessions for girls who wanted to continue workshopping ideas and developing their skills. We have participants from Broken Hill, Gunnedah and Tamworth checking in each month.
The images and video below shows an AKIN workshop in action.
BAGATELLE
Inspired by experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the huge challenges that isolation brought to musicians, we present a series of micro compositions that celebrate choral voice, performed live at the Pitt St Uniting Church.
Bagatelle is the latest work from The House That Dan Built’s ensemble, in collaboration with celebrated composer Sally Whitwell.
The human connection of singing together – with voices blended in real space and time – was lost in the ether. We had become shadows, ghosts and phantoms.
Bagatelle was CANCELLED but we have a rehearsal video . 13 emerging composers had the opportunity to work with Sally on their own choral works and then sing Sallys 5 pieces.
This video shows 5 emerging composers works. The videos are currently in Penrith at a work site that is closed so this is a trailer.
Edited 28/8 to replace place holder video with youtube high res when internet fixed in Elizabeth Bay. (Place holder video below).
TENDER YOUNG CREATURES
Through original song, verbatim monologues and choral harmonies, Tender Young Creatures gives the audience the
experience of being a girl alone at night. The outcome is a more empathetic audience willing to listen to young women and engage in meaningful conversation.
The festival experience can be performed by a minimum of 12 and up to a maximum of 100 young women. The expanded cast will be drawn from young women in the local community who will work alongside The House’s Ensemble leaders, who are our mini choir masters. Each of the young girls will wear a red cape, handmade during the COVID-19 pandemic by 100 women from across Australia. The capes form the centre piece of 100 Capes, 100 Lanterns, 100 Stories, an immersive sound and light installation that is experienced between performances.
TENDER YOUNG CREATURES sizzle
STATEMENT
SUPPORT
SUPPORT
SALT is an interdisciplinary vocal installation
work of space, sculpture and choral composition that follows an emotional journey of female adolescence through discord and harmony, reflecting the fragility and strength of girls finding themselves to be women.
This recording sizzle was taken on our last rehearsal before our filming date. Which has been postponed due to COVID.