Movement

  • Works

    Gregory Lorenzutti creates experiential works that invite audiences to immerse themselves in different places and ecologies.

  • Teaching

    Gregory leads dance classes and workshops tailored to anyone from professional dancers to curious movers exploring their bodies for the first time.

  • In Development

    Gregory currently has a range of projects in their seedling stage of development. He collaborates with artists across Australia and Brazil.

Works

Plant Nation

Inspired by plant wisdom, PLANT NATION, revisits Theatrum Botanicum (2022), conceived and choreographed by Gregory Lorenzutti, made with VCA Dance and Design and Production Students. In a time of climate crisis and ‘plant blindness’ (Prudence Gibson) this new iteration of the work applies ecological thinking to performance process and production.

People and plants are entwined by threads that reach back to our very beginnings as a species. PLANT NATION is a site-specific performance that invites you to experience dance as a potent gateway to trace and reconnect us within the complex pattern of nature and make the vegetal world seen again. Through plant awareness and visibility, a choreographic score made in collaboration with plants aims to motivate a more attentive perception of the places we share with living organisms, and ultimately, how we insert humans back into circular systems of nature, as interconnected and diverse species.

PLANT NATION was made possible through and ARC Linkage Grant held by Professor Marie Sierra (UniMelb), with Dr Prudence Gibson (UNSW) and Associate Professor Sigi Jöttkandt (UNSW).

Choreographer
Gregory Lorenzutti, in collaboration with dancers

Creative Collaborator and Executive Producer
Professor Marie Sierra

Original Costume Designer (Theatrum Botanicum)
Rebeca Silveria

Original Costume Associate Designer
Olivia Peters

Costume Supervisor
Rose McCormick

Sound Composer
Ethan Hunter

Stage Manager
Lucie Sutherland

Audio Engineer
Justin Gardam

Production Coordinator
Tia Wojcik

Rehearsal Director
Nicole Corea

Dancers
Madeline Belli / Alyse Canton / Yinuo Chen / Tash Dotti / Indiana Gordon / Stephanie Kewley / Anastassia Krstevska / Jaden Lal Elliana Martelli / Toby McKnight / Kamryn Mcrae / Tessa O’Toole / Ebony Olsen / Wen Chen Ong / Bei Preston Taylor / Opal Russell
Rena Sangawa / Lily Turner / Emily Yamashita / Melody Zhang

Theatrum Botanicum

Theatrum Botanicum is a biological performance inspired by plant wisdom. It is about reconnecting ourselves to the source and what sustains existence – in particular, plants and soil. Dancer, photographer and farmer Gregory Lorenzutti and VCA’s 3rd Year students created together a new interdisciplinary project re-connecting the world of dance and holistic gardening. Re-connecting because, in nature, nothing is apart, and under our feet there is a constant dance between different living organisms creating life.

In our modern lives, we have been separated from the natural world and displaced it toward the fringes of our cities and neighbourhoods. In doing so we forgot that we are all part of the community of the living. We need to listen to nature for the sake of own survival. In the world of Anthropocentrism that reduces all things that are not human, plants offer us a revolution – a world of collaboration, healthy partnerships with other life forms and a humbling ability to coexist and thrive within a diverse ecosystem. As dancers, we search for a deeper engagement and potentials of our bodies, movement and rhythm - we are moving beings. This work take us into a journey to see plant movement and migration; complex forest intelligence; resource and information shared by mycelium sustaining a myriad of life forms; and resilience through collaboration and interdependency.

Theatrum Botanicum seeks to shine a light in an unseen world, help us to better understand our role within the larger planetary life and re-engage with soil - the same soil we feed from and dance on. In the making of the piece, dancers worked with soil and its microbiology, seeds and natural systems design – exploring the intrinsic connections between plant life and humans. Movement and choreographic scores were devised by the dancers’ encounters with a range of earth-centric practices, and dug up movement vocabulary informed by the vegetal world. The visual concepts and elements of this work were built mostly from organic materials gathered around Southbank and repurposing previously used materials. Dancers and creatives have grown set elements on campus. The gardens and edible plants in this piece will be feeding the students, and other specimens will be relocated across Melbourne University gardens. All organic material left will be composted and turned into soil after the show’s completion. Theatrum Botanicum aims to re-bind/ re-awaken our senses to the natural rhythms, seasonality, biodiversity and plant knowledge, and create a communal space to honour and dance with plants.

Artistic Director: Gregory Lorenzutti

Dancer/makers: Talia Benson / Zoe Brown / Valentina Dilon / Iris Elgar / Wendy Feng Theresia Hegeman / Zoe Howard / Lana Hubber / Cora Hughes / Freya Humphery Jainam Mashruwala / Isabelle Nicolai / Patrick O’Luanaigh / Rebekah Parsons Tai Platania / Aimee Raitman / Samakshi Sidhu / Erin Taube / Anna Tolotchkov / Carly Tyzzer Piroska Elizabeth / Katherine Whitaker

Set Designer: Rubi Dinardo • Associate Set Designer: Brooke Painter • Costume Designer: Rebecca Silveria • Associate Costume Designer: Olivia Peters • Lighting Designer: Iz Zettl • Vision Designer: Océane Federow-Yemm • Sound Composer: Ethan Hunter • Stage Manager: Isabella Stephens • Assistant Stage Manager: Maisey Butchart • Technical Manager / Head LX: Natalya Shield • Deputy Head Electrician: Taishah Simcox • LX Programmer/ Operator: Chiara Wenban • Vision Programmer/Operator: Lara Gabor • Senior Costumier: Wendy Borg • Costume Manager: Mikailah Looker • Assistant Costume Manager: Hannah Jukes Frere • Workshop HOD: Al Brill • Workshop Assistant: Tait Adams / Sara Bayley / Josh Morris / Ingrid Muller / Saskia Permezel / Rachel Stone • Production Coordinator: James Lipari • Video: James Wright / NON Studio • Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti

CompostMe

CompostMe is a solo performance inspired and informed by the soil. The artist becomes a vessel to carry, store and preserve the last frontier of our existence on the planet - where we feed from and where we die. It is a cyclical work informed by the generational window stored in the soil and its fragility. The final work ultimately aims at composting the artist.

CompostMe is a site responsive performance which takes audiences into a sensorial journey through gardens in a dialogue between people, plants and non-humans inhabitants.

CompostMe was originally commissioned by MPavilion performance MULCH curated by Lichen Kelp.

Concept, choreography and performance: Gregory Lorenzutti

Costume: Geoffrey Watson

Photography: Frank Cecconi

Balimbing: Filipino Queerness

Gregory Lorenzutti’s photos come to us at a particularly pertinent time. Never in modern Australia has gender and sexuality been so overtly politicised—stripping us of complexity and reducing us to types that can be easily understood. In this collection, I see individuals comfortably holding paradox, embracing the many dichotomies that make up a life. I see individuals celebrating their inherent queerness—whatever that means for them—while showing deep reverence to their community and religion. I see thoughtful, elaborate, spectacular dress. I see struggle, joy and faith.

This is an exhibition that, in many ways, cuts through the one-dimensional stories we tell about identity and returns us to our more complicated, queer selves. It is the culmination of three years of conversation and reportage—including two trips to Tacloban in the Philippines to shoot the Santo Niño fiesta, a popular Catholic celebration that is powered by the queer community. With an eye for subtlety and the spectacular, often in the same moment, Gregory captures the intimate details of the local queer people, revealing layers of beauty and humanity that invite deep contemplation on the meaning of gender.

Luminous and bold, tender and sincere, Balimbing: Filipino Queerness reminds us of the true power of documentary photography. It is both foreign to a non-Filipino audience, and deeply familiar, reflecting the inner, emotional landscapes that transcend culture and place. This is a moment in time when individuals can freely perform who they are and how they feel in the world—highlighting the need for more such spaces that enable our queerness and bring us closer to life.  

‘Balimbing; Filipino Queerness' was presented as part of Mapping Melbourne at Temperance Hall.

MECHANICAL EYE

Echoing the dynamic between the vibrancy of the moving body and the rigidity of the camera lens, the work MECHANICAL EYE questions how we accidentally amass images and how these and other images pervade our lives and sculpt perceptions of ourselves in the world. Yesterday, today, now and tomorrow, we capture images. We constantly frame and re-frame our lives by choosing to narrow our vision. We see the world through the filter of our beliefs, by photographing edited moments.

MECHANICAL EYE highlights paradoxes that reside in our contemporary lives: movement and stillness, ephemeral and lasting, inimitably unique and endlessly reproducible. The work asks for a reconsideration of how complicit we are in image creation, distribution and absorption.

MECHANICAL EYE
Choreography & Direction / Gregory Lorenzutti
In collaboration with / Sarah Fiddaman, Maud Léger, Harrison Hall and Ashley Marie Mclellan
Dramaturge / Paea Leach
Sound design / Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey
Light consultant / Bosco Shaw
Stage manager / Arielle Cottingham
Sound operator / Chris Fitzpatrick
Graphic design / Cristhianne Vassão
Video / Sam Mcgilp

Untitled

A video collaboration/ experimentation/ divertissement with Australia-based dance-maker & writer Paea Leach.

Untitled is a choreographic improv film session collaboration born from friendship and empathy between two people. Lorenzutti and Leach met working in Sydney in 2014. Gregory just a few months after his arrival in Australia and Paea experiencing a new dance possibility for her body after injury.

Untitled is about space occupation. Bodies intertwined. Contact. Non contact. Avoidance. Mask. Ink.

Composition and performance: Gregory Lorenzutti and Paea Leach

Recorded at Temperance Hall - Melbourne / Australia.

Alaska Gallery

Alaska Gallery is the name of a residential building where Gregory used to live in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) when he arrived there in 1995. This building is an iconic place in the city where several underground artist, prostitutes, gay community and bohemians used to frequent and experience a bit of freedom in those dark times – the brutal military government in Brazil (1960-85).

The embodiment of this work was informed by the physical impressions attached to the body after a traumatic experience – not only in his own life, but in different bodies and experiences also Following this path, Lorenzutti immersed himself in a systematic movement experimentation using, as starting point, the physical impressions left in the body/memory after it had lived a violent experience.

In the studio, Lorenzutti looked for situations which could provoke his body to find unusual and intense ways to move. As a result, he noticed a permanent fragmentation and reminiscence of the trauma in his motion approach. Inevitably, political and social questions arose about the subject matter of violence.

What kind of individuals are we becoming living in a world surrounded by violence? What kind of body (as subject or a society) are we building having violence happening in different levels and circumstances? And how might it affect my artistic practice? To answer these questions no longer as the discovery of truth, but rather as the projection of meaning.

Creation and performance: Gregory Lorenzutti

Video maker: Joaquim Tomé

Film editing: Joaquim Tomé

Special guests: Bruno Cezario and Fabiana Nunes

Co-production: Brazil - Australia

Teaching

Gregory Lorenzutti leads workshops and classes for all ages and skill levels. Full of energy and inspiration, they are a diverse conversation traversing various disciplines and influences. Having danced in and experienced the cultural melting pot that is Brazil, Gregory’s understanding of movement is broad and exciting.

With international experience facilitating movement-based workshops, Gregory has devised a unique way of introducing dance to new movers and deepening the participants’ relationship with their bodies as a source of joy and health. He has led classes with some of the world’s best dance companies, including Centro Coreográfico do Rio de Janeiro, Ballet de Niterói, Dancehouse, Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc.

In his most recent research, Gregory has created a series of workshops exploring a physical conversation between humans and the botanical world. People are invited to open their senses to reconnect to plants, soil and the micro-creatures sharing this world with us, through movement.

Get in touch below for workshops and classes.

Works in Development

Apoteose

Apoteose is the latest dance & visual work in development by Brazilian-Australian artist Gregory Lorenzutti in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Neda Rahmani and costume designer Andrew Treloar. 

In this work Lorenzutti delves into his cultural background & upbringing in Brazil watching telenovelas (soap-operas) & carnival parades. Later in his life, Gregory finds himself performing for over a decade in Rio de Janeiro's Carnival Parade and finding his voice as an artist. A young queer person experimenting with aesthetics, traditional rhythms and a visceral love for movement.

Apoteose is a homage, a love letter, a return in order to move forward as an artist within Australian social and artistic context.

Concept, Choreography & Direction: Gregory Lorenzutti
Sound & Performer: Neda Rahmani
Costume Designer: Andrew Treloar
Producer: Kath Papas 
Video & Editing: Marque La Brooy

Project supported by Lucy Guerin Inc Residency Program

Memory Tearoom

Melbourne based Japanese-Australian performance maker and choreographer Yumi Umiumare and Brazilian-Australian photographer and dance maker Gregory Lorenzutti had a six-month art residency at Boyd Studio-1 from January to June 2018 creating a space titled 'Memory Tearoom’.

The artists explored the idea of shared memory through installation, movement research, photography and tea ceremony rituals. During the residency, Yumi and Gregory collected 41 stories from a vast range of people from different cultural backgrounds, ages and gender. The work culminated in a public showing where the results of the residency were shared with peers and guests.

Performance: Yumi Umiumare & Gregory Lorenzutti

Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti

Music: Dan West

Video Edit: Sam Mcgilp

At Boyd Studio-1, Melbourne 2018

This project was funded by City of Melbourne Arts Residencies Program

Janela [Jendela]

Janela [Jendela] is a new collaboration between Brazilian-Australian dancer and photographer Gregory Lorenzutti and Indonesian multidisciplinary trans artist Tamara Pertamina.

Lorenzutti and Pertamina are embarking on an artistic and spiritual journey researching about pre-colonial manifestations of genders and spirituality in their respective cultures.

Their research [in its early stages on the video] drawn inspiration from personal memories, family histories and intergenerational connectedness.

Janela [Jandela] meaning window in their native languages is a space for a passage, a ritual, a place for gathering and worshiping respect for vulnerability.