Set in a surreal world at the edges of logical comprehension, Mondo Ghillies is a dance film about the way we give volume to our surroundings through our perceptual awareness.

On one level, the work explores the poetic force of highland tradition. Cinematically, the project treats highland dancing the way that Vivienne Westwood treated Scottish clothing during the emergence of punk rock: cutting it up and reconfiguring it, it attempts to give it some kind of edge.

But more than this, my performance in the film is an exploration of my own subjectivity. In 2008, during a serious car accident, I sustained severe brain trauma, which left me physically and mentally paralysed. Experimenting with a fragmented narrative, Mondo Ghillies resonates with the story of my recovery and the hours of dancing that I undertook to neurologically rewire my once completely paralyzed right side. Drawing on this experience, the narrative that unfolds this work explores the way that the brain’s neuroplastic properties effect our subjective capacity to perceptually architect and move through the environments and events that unfold our surrounding worlds.

The film was commissioned for the 2010 Next Wave festival for Private Dances in association with ReelDance, with support from The Australia Council for the Arts.

Mondo Ghillies was shot on location at Fort Lytton, a Historic Site managed by the Department of Environment and Resource Management