No place like home

Some artists claim a grand plan underlies their work, but Martin del Amo admits he found the inspiration for his latest show largely by accident.

At the beginning of last year I was touring the UK. It was winter there and it was summer here and I wasn’t very happy about it at all, missing out on summer, del Amo says.

I went into a record store and they had a song playing -¦ that had repeated lines -˜oh my God, I can’t believe it, never been this far away from home’.

The lyrics struck del Amo, who was born in Europe of German and Spanish parents and moved to Australia about five years ago.

After I left the shop I thought, -˜That would make a good title for a show,’ because it reflected how I was feeling at the time, he says.

I was a bit homesick but at the same time it encapsulated the thematics that I was just starting to think about for a new show.

Having relocated to Sydney but also touring a lot to the UK and Japan heightened my awareness of the notion of home, not only as a geographical location but also as an emotional state.

In his new show, Never Been This Far Away From Home, del Amo uses spoken text and dance forms including Japanese Butoh to consider what home means.

Electronica composer Gail Priest plays alongside del Amo on stage, adding another layer to the work at the newly opened CarriageWorks near Redfern.

There are lots of dance and music sequences, but they’re interspersed with stories, del Amo says.

The stories range from personal experience and more universal musings on those topics.

My work fits between dance and performance art.

While del Amo missed inclusion in the Mardi Gras arts festival this year, he says his shows are relevant to the gay community.

I can’t say it’s queer performance because it’s not investigating sexual identity as such, he says.

But as a gay man dealing with universal subjects, I’d say it’s certainly imbued with might be called a gay sensibility.

I think these questions about what is home, what happens when you leave the familiar -¦ are something that gays and lesbians can relate very well to.

Never Been This Far Away From Home is on between 7 and 17 March from Wednesday to Saturday, 8pm, at Performance Space, CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh. Book on 9209 4614 or at www.moshtix.com.au.