an experimental dance work by Juliet Widyasari Burnett and Ishvara Devati
premiered 2025, Temperance Hall, Naarm/Melbourne
as part of the inaugural Temper program
photos by Jeff Busby
The trans and cis female bodies are dynamic, sacred entities from a speculative future; untethered from patriarchal history and vessels of new mythologies. The organic hardware of these bodies is a portal: continuously upgraded, reprogrammed and reincarnated.
In the world of CYVASA 2.0, ancient Javanese spirituality merges with techno-fantasy aesthetics and glitch distortion. Here, desire is not only sensual but evolutionary; a driving force that transforms the body’s architecture. The body is a liquid machine containing pulsating circuits of water, blood, sweat, hormones and ancestral data; secreting myths and birthing digital deities. New sacred rituals are built from uniquely female and queer codes, burying the past. This is not a stage, but a temple, laboratory and server room, where mythologies are rewritten through the flux of flesh, machine and collective longing.
Concept, choreography + performance: Juliet Widyasari Burnett + Ishvara Devati
Music: Metatesis (Dyah Isaka + Nadya Hatta)
Set: Juliet Widyasari Burnett
Lighting: Alex Torney
Producer: Michaela Coventry
Production Manager: Alex Torney
This project is supported by Experience Gold Coast, Temperance Hall Melbourne, Performance Space and Critical Path’s Experimental Choreographic Residency, private donors and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
We acknolwedge the Traditional Owners of the lands in which we worked, the Birrabirragal, Gadigal and Boon Wurrung Peoples, and we pay our respects to their Elders past and present. Sovereignty has never been ceded.