Thomas’ work often involves human and non-human exchanges, a fluid multiplicity of encounters. His work explores choreographic actions that question conceptions of self and collectivity in the current age. He recently completed the Honours year (Visual Art) of a BFA (Dance) at the Victorian College of the Arts, receiving the Fiona Myer Award for 'The Water Disappears Eventually' (2019). As a performer, Thomas has worked in varying contexts with choreographers and artists such as Antony Hamilton, Phillip Adams, Jo Lloyd, Russell Dumas, Shian Law, Hermann Nitsch and Jonathan Sinatra performing at Meat Market, Arts House, Dark Mofo, MPavilion, ACCA, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Dancehouse. He has undertaken short residencies through Testing Grounds and Dancehouse. Thomas has presented 'Not Working Together' (2019) and 'Rain' (2017) for Melbourne Fringe Festival, as well as short works including 'This is Sleeping…' (2016) for the Beijing Dance Festival – Youth Dance Marathon. Thomas is interested in the capacity for performance to leave an imaginative trail.
we fly together
‘we fly together’ is a travelling choreographic provocation. It deals with how to bring the outside towards the inside and the inside towards the outside, attending to things much smaller and larger than the bodies we inhabit. Two small-sized audiences meet at separate departure points and are directed to follow a performer, moving in and amongst the inner-city landscape. The work utilises the most imaginative system of all, the alphabet, which functions as a puzzling structure for the performers to locate, observe, embody, echo, expand, interpret and interact with things along the pathway. Performers leap, imagine collisions, roll with their imagination and envision altering their environments.
The work traverses the spectrum between representing and reimagining, as performers transform their bodies and, at times, are overcome by stimulation. As the two groups eventually come together at a mutual gathering point, an unfolding stream of actions occurs where the performers navigate physical and imaginative parameters. How can such action allow our imaginations to intersect, and how can these intersections be perceived? In future developments of the work, there will be a focus on deepening exploration into other instances where the imagination operates, such as hallucination, illusion, mirage and fixation.
‘we fly together’ takes flying seriously. The work contemplates how an individual's imagination operates in relation to a collective, and a public. Our imaginations are conditioned by the bombardment of advertising, moving images and surveillance technologies in the public sphere. Why does a world full of images produce such a static imagination? The project considers our capacity to imagine another time or place or structure or thing. Is the imagination a dead concept, a useless potential or is it an underutilised faculty that can elicit change? ‘we fly together’ asks – can we share an image and do we even want to?