photo courtesy of the author
Carl Nilsson-Polias
I grew up in Adelaide and Göteborg as a bilingual Greco-Swedish-Australian kid who wanted to play soccer for AC Milan. Then, a role in a French company’s production at the 1996 Adelaide Festival gave me a deludedly halcyon image of what it was to be involved in the arts. I hold Barrie Kosky personally responsible for curating this corruption of innocence. So, I went to the Victorian College of the Arts as an acting student and now I am an actor, an Artistic Associate with The Hayloft Project, a member of the Green Room panel for Independent Theatre and an out-of-form soccer player.
I began writing on theatre, film, music and dance while studying at VCA. In a curriculum that focused entirely on kinaesthetic learning there was no outlet for the written word, very little space for intellectual discourse or the communication of ideas beyond the sheltering walls of the studio. In response, I founded a student blog, wangled review tickets from theatres, cinemas and festivals, encouraged my friends to join me and suddenly became an editor and critic. Today, my writing about the arts coexists with my own artistic practice—I see both fundamentally as means to communicate and interrogate.
dance massive feature kinetics: sculpted & danced: connected, chunky move
dance massive feature turning the tables, working the audience: branch nebula, sweat
dance massive feature erupting from the archive: balletlab, amplification
RT99 from screenplay to stage: ivo van hove, director, cassavetes opening night
RT90 the mask speaks: hong kong arts festival: the wooster group, akram khan & juliette binoche
see my blog www.carlnp.com.au
RealTime issue #103 June-July 2011 pg. web