Training Ground by Israeli performance group Public Movement took place as part of ACCA in the City.

Every evening during the festival week the performers marked out a temporary playing field in Melbourne’s CBD, activating a series of gestures of conflict rooted in the rules of AFL and performed in its stadiums. The choreography combined moments of confrontation, acts of appropriation and the passion of physical rivalry.

Public Movement is a performative research body that investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Public Movement’s actions in the past and in the future include: manifestations of presence, fictional acts of hatred, new folk dances, synchronised procedures of movement, spectacles, marches, inventing and reenacting moments in the life of individuals, communities, social institutions, peoples, states, and of humanity. In the last eight years, Public Movement has explored the regulations, forces, agents, policies and formations of identity and systems of ritual that govern the dynamics of public life and public space.

Public Movement delegate to Melbourne: Hagar Ophir
Local performers: Rebecca Jensen, Andre Jessop-Smith, Klara Kelvey, Rhys Ryan, Lilian Steiner
Producer: Frances Fleetwood with Zoe Theodore
Local volunteers: Ewa A. Bogatek,  Rebecca Poynton, Eitan Ritz, Adva Weinstein, Carol Que
Conceived by Public Movement agents: Hagar Ophir and Ma’ayan Choresh
Public Movement director: Dana Yahalomi

Photographer: Zan Wimberley