Image description: A hand drawn line drawing in thin black ink on cream, lightly gridded paper, scanned at high resolution. There is a frame around a drawing of a dining table with plates, cups and vases of flowers across it. Four hands holding cutlery hover over the table and reach for items. Below this drawing in messy handwriting it says:
framework for tour:
we walk, and I discuss basic tour/location/histories/our position.
move towards a location where I tell them a story while they look at something.
– a work that exists
anywhere at all
times – people
approach me.
18
JACQUI SHELTON
Something Like Dancing
Softcover, 150 x 214 mm, 52pp + 6 inserts, laser print
First edition of 82
Edited by Tim Coster
Design by Xinyuan (Caesar) Li
Published by 3-ply, 2024
ISBN 978-0-6483942-3-5
RRP AUD 28.00 +GST
"Something Like Dancing is a one-on-one performance work that can be performed in quiet spaces such as a home, a studio, a park bench, or a library. Over the course of three sittings, a participant in the work will be taught to recite three stories by heart. As a book, Something Like Dancing is a collection of short essays and conversations that have come to be the only document of this one-on-one performance work that I performed over a period of five years. Many of these essays started as chapters of a PhD I wrote on the work, but in the intervening years have come to read much closer to how I speak. I don’t dance professionally but I love to do so with friends – the same could be said for art." -JS
Publisher note: Something Like Dancing continues 3-ply’s This-Ass project, investigating the adaptation of artist PhD theses for a public audience.
The launch of Something Like Dancing took the form of an afternoon gathering at the Cricketers Bar, Naarm-Melbourne on Saturday 5 October 2024. The site was a rainy day backup, instead of a planned picnic on the banks of the Birrarung Marr; both were places where stories from the book had previously been performed. A wedding party was also sheltering from the rain; the bar was crowded and noisy, but fittingly celebratory. We proceeded with a reading from Jacqui Shelton, one of the stories from the book, even though the wedding chatter muffled her words, as well as a conversation between Jacqui and designer Xinyuan Caesar Li, only heard clearly by the two of them. The assembled friends and fans gathered respectfully, and listened intently, as this echo of a one-to-one performance took place.
