In Never Been This Far Away From Home, choreographer/performer Martin del Amo embarks on a journey that charts his fascination with the unknown. With his trademark dark humour, del Amo conjures a world in which the exhilaration of leaving behind the familiar is contrasted with the terrifying yet tantalizing prospect of the new.

Set to a live electronic composition by sound artist Gail Priest, Never Been This Far Away From Home is a disarmingly funny exploration of instability and dislocation. It is performed through the artist’s unique fusion of intimate storytelling and dance that is both tender and intensely raw. Del Amo’s stories are inspired by childhood fears, peculiar phenomenon or psychological states that take his audiences to uncanny, yet strangely familiar places.

Empty at the beginning, the large white stage is slowly filled with ten microphones, one after another. At each microphone, del Amo tells a story. The microphone leads are carefully placed on the floor. As the piece progresses, a forest of microphones is created, and a map of microphone cords on the ground. In between stories, del Amo dances. His dances are framed by the increasingly complex web of criss-crossing microphone leads. For his final dance, at the end of the piece, del Amo disconnects the microphone leads and reels them in. The white square is now free of the criss-crossing chords and the sections they delineated.

See also: Anatomy of an Afternoon, Mountains Never Meet and It’s a Jungle Out There

Martin del Amo