Motel Deception on ABC This Week

28 October 2009

Animation Centre, Screenings - External

Motel Deception is an immersive dance experience combining TV, dance and an interactive web-site experience. Chrissie Parrott, one of Australia’s most formidable choreographers has created a four-minute dance work as the centre-piece for the project.

The ABC, Screenwest and the Department of Culture and the Arts, WA, commissioned the dance work, four-minute film, making of documentary and interactive web-site as part of the iArts initiative.

The iArts initiative is a vibrant collaboration between West Australian producers, artists and arts collectives who combine their respective talents to create interactive arts
projects screened on ABC TV and online across its digital platforms.

The ABC is hosting a web-site for Motel Deception. The centre of which will be a mash up tool where users can create their own dance piece. They can choose from a gallery of footage and a number of pieces of music to develop their own version of Motel Deception.

This week, Sunday Arts presents a short six-minute documentary which looks at the development of the dance film and the web-site and includes interviews with all the creators.

The following Sunday, Motel Deception, the four-minute dance film will air. In the film, two contemporary dancers – Sally Blatchford as Claire and Richard Cilli as Dexter – portray the journey of two characters in a seedy motel room. It is a fast-paced physical theatre work made for TV and online.

The producer, Nancy Jones, explains a unique component of the initiative “We’re hoping when people visit the web page, they’ll see the film and then want to take up the opportunity to make their own dance film.

“The web-site contains over 350 different clips of the film, shot from various angles. There might be five or six angles of the same shot. So a person who is interested in dance and wants to study the movement could do a forensic examination and look at a particular shot or movement from the top, the side and other views. It is interesting to see what works on film, how you film something, how it in fact looks. And what you can put it with.”

To check out Motel Deception – the web-site, where the film can also be viewed, visit

ABC1 Sunday, November 1, 2009 @ 5pm
ABC2 Sunday, November 1, 2009 @ 7.30pm

Motel Deception was developed and produced by ABC TV in association with Blue Moon Film and Video. Producer: Nancy Jones; Director/Choreographer: Chrissie Parrott

Image: Motel Deception. Photographer Bohdan Warchomij