Cowboy

I am deeply consumed, 
I am deeply committed, 
I am becoming, 
A Cowboy.

Cowboy is the winner of Best New Australian work and Best Sound Design for Ben Ely and Anna Whitaker at the 2021 Matilda Awards!

Cowboy is an interactive, solo work that utilises its performance space to create both intimate settings and vast, open landscapes with a free-roaming audience.

The work is site 'adaptable', tailoring the imagined ‘Wild West’ to both indoor and outdoor locations, day or night. Cowboy is poignantly humorous yet sensitive, where Michael's attempt for self-realisation and connection resonates beyond the fantasy. Saddle up for the ride!

How does one have a genuine and meaningful experience as an imagined self?

From surfing trains and taming horses to wandering the desert, Cowboy holds a deeper inquiry into the existence of human persona beyond fantasy. By committing entirely to the iconography of a cowboy, I seek to expose desires and vulnerabilities that exist in our pursuit to form identity.

Michael Smith

Creative team

Choreographer/Performer: Michael Smith 
Sound Composition: Ben Ely
Sound Design: Anna Whitaker
Lighting / Production: Chloe Ogilvie

Produced by: The Farm
Co-producer: Liesel Zink
Mentor: Gavin Webber
Dramaturge: Gavin Webber, Marty Coutts, Liesel Zink

Images: Anne Moffatt

Performance History

2021: Gladstone Entertainment Convention Centre

2020: Brisbane Festival at Metro Arts
2019: TanzZeit, Berlin
2019: AGITART Figueres Festival MOU, Spain
2018: Dance Massive Site Responsive Showcase, Melbourne