SKYE GELLMANN

Bodies Over Bitumen (2015)

Bodies Over Bitumen – is a site-specific piece about time spent with a road, its ghosts and shadows.

Set within the urban landscape, the piece unfolds as a 60-minute guided walk in which three interdisciplinary performers lead audiences through spaces shaped by movement, utility, and neglect.

Drawing on lived experiences of squatting, the creators of Bodies Over Bitumen approach the street not as a backdrop but as an active collaborator.Their embodied knowledge informs how the work listens to the site, highlighting new surfaces to the mundane, unspoken thresholds, and overlooked gestures of occupation.

Through a slow, attentive progression, the piece cultivates a shared encounter between performers, audience, and environment. This quiet collaboration opens space for reflection, allowing new relationships to emerge between bodies and the urban terrain they inhabit.

2016 GREENROOM AWARD, contemporary and experimental panel

2016 GREENROOM NOMINATION, site specific work

2015 BEST EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE, Melbourne Fringe Festival

Genres:
Site-responsive, Walking tour, Contemporary performance, Circus/Physical.

Created:
Skye Gellmann

Artists:
Skye Gellmann, Naomi Francis, Alex Gellmann, Kerien Law

Seasons:
Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Darwin Festival.

Video:

“No spangles or frills… Even the best of ‘new circus’ often boils down to a sequence of thematically related ‘acts,’ failing to create emotional immersion. By contrast, Bodies Over Bitumen places us in direct relationship to the surface of the road, making the space of the streets subtly dangerous, but also a place to play… —Gellmann, Francis and Gellmann, with off-stage creative collaborator Kieran Law, have created something quietly extraordinary.”

– Realtime Arts Magazine