A Match Made in Heaven: Conversation with Benjamin Hurley and Scott Elstermann

by Leila Lois

In the upstairs studio of Dancehouse, Carlton, baby blue fabric catches the mid-morning light streaming through tall windows. The spacious and airy hall seems to echo the celestial nature of the work itself. The wooden floor—no tarquet here—creates an openness that feels intentional as Benjamin Hurley and Scott Elstermann discuss their new collaboration.

There's something immediately compelling about this partnership. Perhaps it's how they finish each other's thoughts, or the way their contrasting energies fill the studio space. Scott, the youngest-ever international recipient of the prestigious Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography, brings theatrical sensibility honed through work with Lucy Guerin Inc and Stephanie Lake Company. Benjamin, born in Alice Springs and now based in Naarm, describes himself as being "from the desert, a place of harshness and red earth," but consciously making "light work, celebrating breath and openness." Since graduating from VCA in 2016, he has worked internationally with renowned companies including Phillip Adams BalletLab, Dance Theatre Heidelberg, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company.

Their new collaboration, Scenarios, marks Benjamin's third choreographic work  following UpAndUpAndUpAndUp (2022) and Dunes Rolling Down Dunes (2023) and will open Dancehouse's 2025 Season 2.

An Unlikely Beginning

"We met at the last ever Dance Massive in 2019," Scott explains. "I actually replaced Ben in a remount of a dance piece, and when we were rehearsing together, we realised that though we have vastly different training, we dance so similarly—but have different performativity perhaps. From there, a creative connection was brokered and we knew we wanted to work together."

Benjamin adds, "Though I'm different to Scott in my focus on abstract movement and themes that go through the body rather than through the prism of theatre, blending both our approaches has pushed this work in interesting ways and allowed us to surrender, at times pushing our practice into areas that scare us."

The synergies run deeper than shared dance vocabularies. "There were funny parallels in our personal narratives," Scott notes. "I used to play the flute and Ben used to play the clarinet, we both did tennis as youngsters. We blend these movement narratives in with our dance training to create different scenarios—they reappear and disappear and are multiplied."

"The physicality of things we've done influenced the piece—Scott did ballroom dancing, which I didn't do, but we share literal repertoire in dance, having both done Merce Cunningham training," Benjamin continues. "We find resonances and moments of harmony in the work. It's not only embodied and non-verbal—there is some text in sections, and verbalizing throughout about a third of the work."

A Fractured Fairytale

What emerges in Scenarios feels both eclectic and dreamlike. "The work is narrative and nonsensically driven," Scott confirms, while Benjamin describes "an overall quality—flounciness, queerness, playfulness, not necessarily in an obvious way, a sensitivity in the aesthetic."

The creative team reflects this attention to aesthetic sensitivity. Robert Downie composed the musical score and sound design, creating what Scott describes as "a variety of registers, from grandiose, like an opera or an orchestra playing, to vocalizing and repeating, a flute and clarinet duet, pulling from a lot of sources."

Matthew Bird designed the set, choosing the recurring baby blue color and draping that "frames the space like an opulent ceremony." Four mirrors suggest "doubling, doppelganger, duality"—elements present from the first week of development in Perth. Geoffrey Watson created "beautiful billowy" costume pieces, while Andrew Treloar designed effigies that return to what Benjamin calls "the celestial theme."

Beyond Competition

With all this talk of doppelgangers, mirrors, and harmonious partnership between two highly credentialed artists, the work sounds like a deliberate challenge to art world competitiveness.

Scott's response is immediate: "The reason I fell in love with dancing was as an escape. Contemporary dance can push the boundaries and question—my practice as a choreographer and performer is to lean in with curiosity and openness. 'It doesn't cost anything to be kind.' A cross-state collaboration with Ben was perfectly aligned with this."

Benjamin's vision extends beyond their partnership: "I'm interested in building a world people can escape into. Not necessarily a direct political statement, but it might happen indirectly due to the ephemeral and philosophical nature of the work. Scenarios becomes a fractured fairytale that mirrors society—we're a match made in heaven, Scott and I, and it's my favorite collaboration, one that I hope continues beyond the project."

Both artists hope to tour the work beyond Melbourne, with Perth as their immediate next target.

Kaleidoscope of Fictions

Scenarios premieres at Dancehouse with lighting by Giovanna Yate Gonzalez completing the creative team. The work promises what Dancehouse describes as "the doppelgänger effect through a veil of camp opulence"—two dancers negotiating space and self, distorting dramatic incidents to question how we live today.

Can they be one and the same? How did they both get to where they are? These questions feel particularly resonant given both artists' remarkable trajectories—Benjamin's Ian Potter Fellowship and Venice Art Biennale participation, Scott's groundbreaking recognition as the youngest-ever Pina Bausch Fellowship recipient and recent finalist status in the 2024 Western Australian of the Year Awards.

The work promises constant transformation beyond the performers' exterior similarities through "grandiose and multiplied" mirrored set design, layered costumes and orchestral soundscapes. It's described as "a tongue-in-cheek duet that projects a kaleidoscope of alternate fictions with new physical language free of meaning yet full of provocation and suggestion."

In that powder blue-draped studio, there's a palpable sense of creative generosity between these artists. Scenarios promises to be more than collaboration—it's a meeting of minds that celebrates the very act of creative partnership, a fractured fairytale exploring what becomes possible when artistic paths converge.

Leila Lois specializes in features, criticism and creative writing that captures feeling and place. Published internationally from Australia to Canada, she brings diverse media experience to every story, finding personality in culture worldwide.

More from Leila here: https://leilaloiswrites.wordpress.com