Bewilder and Apprehense, Choir, 2018. Choral recitation for unspecified number of female voices + worded score with annotations from Euripides’ choral odes for women in Ancient Greek tragedy in order of the poet’s thought.
Cassette player, C90 tape, stereo sound, 5:35min

In Bewilder and Apprehense, the chorus is shifted to center stage.
Excerpts from Euripides’ choral interludes for women are collated to create an episodic, worded score for female voices. In Euripides work, choruses made of women hold little transformative power. They simply watch and comment on what is going on.
The work engages the conversational structure of the choral ode as acoustic thought or inner voice via the antistrophe, (a turning back or against) sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe. Doubling their turns or conversions, in unison, the women oscillate and sway.
Uncertainty is intensified by the non-synchronous, individual, off-timed, unskilled and unrehearsed vocalisations of the newly ‘disbanded’ chorus of women.

Voiced by Elba Balding, Bronwyn Calcutt, Jane Cocks, Anna Finlayson, Camilla Gough, Melanie Irwin, Robin Kingston, Gabrielle Leah New, Lynnette Smith, Deborah Stahle, Eliza Tiernan, Carmel Wallace, Elke Varga.

Euripides, Medea and Other Plays. London; Penguin. Translated by Phillip Vellacott. (MEDEA CHORUS of Corinthian women; HECABE CHORUS of Trojan Women held prisoners by Agamemnon; ELECTRA CHORUS of country women of Mycenae) Euripides, The Bacchae and Other Plays; Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, The Bacchae. London; Penguin, 1954. Translated by Phillip Vellacott. (ION CHORUS of women slaves of Cruesa; THE WOMEN OF TROY CHORUS of captive Trojan Women; HELEN CHORUS of captive Spartan women; THE BACCHAE CHORUS of Oriental women, devotes of Dionysus).

[The movement of the aside ARTSPACE Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne 2018]