Catherine Chappell - Exploring the Bungee Heights

By Jenny Stevenson

New Zealanders have an affinity with Bungee: in fact overseas it is almost synonymous with Godzone and “bungy jumping” is a staple of our attraction as a tourist destination. Local North Shore boy, and entrepreneur, A.J. Hackett first took his commercial “bungy” enterprise to the world in a spectacular fashion – when he threw himself from the Eiffel Tower in 1987 – and he has never looked back.

Bungee has also been a part of the dance world since the ground breaking Argentine aerial dance show, De La Guarda. Now New Zealand choreographer, Catherine Chappell, herself an entrepreneur and a pioneering force in the world of integrated dance, plans to explore how it can be used in her own dance-making. Specifically she intends investigating how bungee can work with contact improvisation.

Two months ago, Catherine, who is the Artistic Director of Touch Compass Dance Company, was awarded the Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship.

She plans to make two trips overseas – the first to study the work of Argentine aerial dancer, Alejandro Rolandi of Strings Attached Company in Sydney and the second to work with Liverpool-based Wired Aerial Theatre under the directorship of Wendy Hesketh and Jamie Ogilvie.

Read full article (Iss. 25) Exploring the Bungee Heights