The Difficult Comedown by Paea Leach and Alexandra Harrison

Presented by Arts House as part of Dance Massive.

Accessible performances:
Wheelchair accessible

Two women carry and haul, run, wait—and consider: what’s clearly necessary, right now? Each asks with all that she is. In duet the women age the body, expand it, injure it. They change. The dance dwells in an ecosystem of seasonality, a rhythm of work that allows the women to persist in unsentimental relationship to the earth. Meanwhile, they don’t have to take care of each other—but they do.

The Difficult Comedown is interested in shared resilience and the labour of women. It considers a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, past human predominance on earth. Borne of long-embodied knowledge, and compelled by wilfulness, this is performance from the ground up: an immersion in slow change.

Performers Paea Leach and Alexandra Harrison shatter their solo lives to come down to earth. It is difficult, but they make mountains.

Creators and Performers: Paea Leach and Alexandra Harrison
Lighting Designer and Production Management: Bosco Shaw
Dramaturge: Cynthia Troup
Sound Designer: Marco Cher-Gibard
Designer: Anna Tregloan
Producer: Erin Milne, Bureau of Works.

Supported by: The Difficult Comedown is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria; The Besen Family Foundation; The Substation; the Macedon Ranges Shire Council; Additive Lighting; Bureau of Works; University of Melbourne; and the City of Melbourne through Arts House.

Image by: Gregory Lorenzutti