Dancehouse 2016 Annual Report by Dancehouse

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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Image credit: The Promised Land, Christina Simons for Jill Orr.

ARTISTIC REPORT 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS DANCEHOUSE IS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EDITORIAL CHAIR’S REPORT & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S REPORT A SNAPSHOT OF DANCEHOUSE IN 2016 AUDIENCE AND PARTICIPATION MANAGEMENT & STAFFING STRUCTURE DANCEHOUSE 2016 ARTISTIC PROGRAM ARTISTIC PROGRAM IN A SNAPSHOT KEIR CHOREOGRAPHCIC AWARD DANCEHOUSE INVITES DANCE TERRITORIES HOUSEMATE PERFORMANCE _IN RESIDENCE DANCEHOUSE INTERNATIONAL

............................. 4 ............................. 5 .....……...…………... 6 ..……………………… 7 ….........…………….. 8 ……………………….. 9 ..……………………... 11 .………………………. 18 ............................. 19 ....……………………. 20 .............................. 23 ..……………………… 24

ARTIST DEVELOPMENT LEARNING CURVE ROOM TO MOVE CAPACITY BUILDING SPACE GRANTS

……………………….. 25 ..……………………... 26 ...…………………….. 27 ..……………………… 28

YOU AND DANCEHOUSE NON-CURATED SEASONS DANCEHOUSE DIARY ONLINE CONTENT PUBLIC CLASSES

..……………………… 29 ...…………………….. 32 .............................. 33 ...…………………….. 34

MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT MARKETING REPORT MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS CONNECT! OUR GIVING PROGRAM

............................. 35 ...…………………….. 36 ............................. 43 ............................. 44

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

Cover Image credit: Sandra Parker, Small Details, photo by Gregory Lorenxutti for Dancehouse

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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Introduction to Dancehouse for Strategic Plan 2017-2020 by Co-Founder Hellen Sky. 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EDITORIAL BORDERLINES AND ATTUNEMENTS We began 2016 holding our breath. With the Brandis cuts to arts funding and the adjustment to a four-year vision for our funding bodies, the futures of independent artists and of the organisations nurturing them seemed dismal and unwieldy. In retrospect, it prompted us to sit back and genuinely reflect on who we are, what we do, how we do it and where we situate ourselves within the Australian and global arts ecology. It also prompted us to attune our support to independent art practice even more deeply, which we see as the very embodiment of the notion that art is never any ‘one’ thing. It is the petri dish of our artistic and cultural future, the place of true experimentation and the champion of alterity, diversity and pluralism. It allowed us to devise and formulate a strong Strategic Plan that fully reflects our artist-centric philosophy and plurality of vision. So in 2016, we continued to invest, as always, in those artists, who put their moving bodies on the line so that the line becomes an inspiration, a connector, a horizon. So that we can see it. So that we can ride it. One of the most notable achievements for Dancehouse was the second edition of the Keir Choreographic Award, which reaffirmed its importance and timeliness in the Australian dance ecology. Again, the Award offered a fully funded opportunity for 8 artists to develop and present a new idea. The Melbourne semifinals season was accompanied by a rich and diverse public program, devised in partnership with the Sydney Biennale, allowing us to bring to Melbourne some of the most important international minds of dance making and thinking today. A conversation series in partnership with Victoria College of the Arts and ACCA, a series of podcasts (which to date have been downloaded over 4700 times) and a workshop on critical writing on dance led by the iconic Deborah Jowitt are arguably the highlights of this public program.

Our HOUSEMATE for 2016, Matthew Day, presented his work ASSEMBLANGE #1. Assemblage #1 was a different kind of construction – it operated on the middle ground between passive object and active subject. It built with cuts and breaks, it rebelled against what you may expect, it unfolded as the gaze accepted the non-spectacularity of the gesture, it inhabited as one let go. And there was a visceral letting go in Assemblage #1, a sort of poetic absence while doing, a body in space and time, surrounded by concrete objects as a shield against the growing immaterialities of our lives. Matthew Day assembled for us an intimate space which, in its becoming, reminded us to simply be. Coincidentally, almost all the works presented in 2016 pointed to the various forms that movement takes today, which can result in new perspectives on a societal sense of togetherness. It resonates with Bojana Cvejic’s thoughts in her Audio Stage conversation on how we might experiment today with ‘being together’—trans-individuation rather then selfie-isation of our selves. Dancehouse will continue to be the site and situation that enable artists to comprehend and seize the power to activate those sites with political and economic agency as well as critical thinking to feed the political consciousness of being today. With them, we will continue to enable and unfold those forces of making and bodily becoming that can awaken our atrophied sense of care in relation to what matters: matter, imagination, politics, ethics, being together, returning to being. ~ Angela Conquet

A new program was launched in 2016, ROOM TO MOVE—a platform for a different kind of critical approach to Australian dance making, a different practice of discourse and exchange, of proximity and distancing. ROOM TO MOVE is about reflexivity; about criticality rather than criticism; about challenging thinking in the making process; about needling rather than confirmation; about rocking the boat and not keeping the waves quiet. In so doing, ROOM TO MOVE aims to promote and support the making of dance and the development of those who make it. For the 3rd edition of DANCE TERRITORIES, we brought together Indigenous Australian artist Sarah-Jane Norman and French Algerian artist Nacera Belaza. We hear Belaza’s The Shout when we think of Charlie Hebdo, of Alep and Palmyre, of Boko Haram, of the women out in the streets of Poland. We feel SarahJane’s scones scratching down our throat when we think of Don Dale, of Nauru, of boats adrift and sinking, of the walls built at the Hungarian borders by the same people who took down the Berlin wall—of all the walls that come to trump our plans for unity within our diversity. The artists in this program were radical, uncompromising and unremittingly profound in their quest. The themes of this program, Border Lines, was more timely than ever. 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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A SNAPSHOT OF DANCEHOUSE IN 2016 Performances, Creative Developments & Lectures/Seminars 9 curated seasons (consisting of 50 performances) including: 9 Commissioned works 11 new Australian Works 2 existing Australian Works 3 International Works 2 Public Programs 7 Conversations 1 Housemate Residency 1 International Residency 4 Summer Space Grants 3 Quick Response Grants

Artist Development 15 Dancehouse Curated Classes and Intensives 2 Dancehouse Professional Development Opportunities 1 Mentoring Program - Learning Curve 4 Capacity Building Workshops 29 Independently run public classes

6357

2016 Audience

Curated Seasons

Local Community Development 5 Community Events hosted 2 Public Programs 15 young people involved in Rotary Youth Arts Project/Dance

3723

New Initiatives Room to Move International co-commission

Email Subscribers

Performances

Economic Impact 3 full time employees 3 part time employees 1 Creative Advisor 3 casual employees 118 artists paid a fee by Dancehouse 30 Volunteers

9 Non-curated seasons: Melbourne Fringe & Community Events (consisting of 18 performances)

118

International Programs THE SHOUT Nacera Belaza (FR) LEARNING CURVE with Myriam Gourfink (FR) Lecture Performance Adrian Heathfiled (UK) Writing Workshop with Deborah Jowitt (USA) walk + talk no.19 by Philip Gehmacher (GE) In conversation with Chrysa Parkinson (USA/SW) _IN RESIDENCE with Yanira Castro (USA)

Total Artists Employed

172 New

Dancehouse International (Outgoing International Tours) Amaara Raheem, Alice Heyward and Becky Hilton supported to perform in Xavier Le Royâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Temporary Title at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Alice Heyward was supported to attend the B/Motion Choreographic Workshop in Bassano Del Grappa Italy.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

5903

Social Media Subscribers

Dancehouse Members

118

Paid Artists

Public Classes

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AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION & ENGAGEMENT Performances, Public Programs & Free Events Paid 1446 Free/Complimentary 608 Total

2054

Attendance at Classes, Workshops, Masterclasses & Professional Development Programs Paid Free

3438 865

Total

4303

Members and Social Media users 172 active Dancehouse members 3723 active email subscribers 2933 Facebook Likes (544 new likes in 2016) 10 862 Facebook video views 1954 Twitter followers (172 new likes in 2016) 1016 Instagram followers (665 new likes in 2016) 1 016 621 Website hits 4316 Dancehouse Diary website hits 4774 Audio Stage podcast downloads

10, 862

Facebook video views

1 016 621 Website Hits

Venue Occupancy (Dancehouse Program, rehearsals, classes & workshops) 2015

2016

Total hours available

12365

11800

Total hours used

7022

6739.5

Average annual %

56.7%

58.2%

Excerpt from Dancehouse Strategic Plan 2016-2020 - redefinition of mission and vision

Percentage +/-

+1.5%

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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MANAGEMENT & STAFFING STRUCTURE DANCEHOUSE BOARD

Office Bearers James Ostroburski

Chair

Chief Executive, Kooyong Group Director, Bundanon Trust Director, Australian Chamber Orchestra Director, National Theatre St Kilda Director, Institute of Creative Health

5/6

Shelley Lasica

Deputy Chair

Choreographer/Performer

6/6

Suzanne Sandford

Secretary

Principal Lawyer, Slater & Gordon

4.5/6

John Paolacci

Treasurer

Partner, ShineWing

5/6

Rebecca Hilton

Choreographer and Pedagogue

4/6

Nick Hays

Manager, Major Gifts, Victoria University

6/6

Penny Hueston

Senior Editor, The Text Publishing Co.

2.5/3

Dean Hampel

Head, Corporate Partnerships at Melbourne Theatre Company & Cofounder, Localing Private Tours

3/3

Eva Bajoras

HR/Management Consultant

5/5

Atlanta Eke

Choreographer/Performer

4/6

Dr Olivia Millard

Lecturer in Dance, Deakin University Resigned in May 2016

2/2

Helen Simondson

ACMI Screen Events Manager

3.5/5

Staff Members

Office

EFT

Angela Conquet

Artistic Director/CEO

Full-time

Audrey Schmidt

Administration & Communications Manager Until August Communications & Development Manager

Full-time

Claire Capel-Stanley

Development Manager (until April)

0.6EFT

Olivia Hutchinson

Administation Officer

Full-time

Jessica Morris Payne

Program Producer

0.6EFT

Van Locker

Production Manager

0.6EFT

Daniel Freeman

Venue Manager

0.6EFT

Arunya Trezise

Bookkeeper

Contract

Joey Demczuk

Administration & Communications Manager Until March

Full-time

Ordinary Members

From left to right: Helen Simondson, Eva Bajoras, John Paolacci, Angela Conquet, James Ostroburski, Shelley Lasica, Nick Hays, Atlanta Eke, Becky Hilton. Missing from this picture: Dean Hampel and Penny Heuston.

DANCEHOUSE TEAM

From left to right: Angela Conquet, Jessica Morris Payne, Audrey Schmidt, Olivia Hutchinson, Daniel Freeman, Van Locker

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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2016 ARTISTIC PROGRAM IN A SNAPSHOT CURATED SEASONS SPECIAL INITIATIVES KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD SEMI-FINALS – 26-30 April KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD PUBLIC PROGRAM - 23 March - 1 May DANCE TERRITORIES with Melbourne Festival - 14-16 October

- SHIAN LAW - SOCIAL STUDIES: EPIC THEATRE - August 12 - ELENA OSALDE - 360 DEGREES OUT OF STILLNESS - September 2 - LEAH LANDAU - THE SEQUEL 2 - October 7 - SARAH ELSWORTH - UPSTREAM (B-SIDES) - December 2 RESIDENCIES

DANCEHOUSE INVITES Sandra Parker - Small Details - 18-20 March De Quincey Co. - METADATA - 9-10 September

HOUSEMATE PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY 10 weeks for making a new work presented over a 5-night season – Matthew Day

HOUSEMATE PERFORMANCE SEASON Matthew Day – ASSEMBLAGE #1 – 23-27 November

An unconventional site for unwrapping and sharing processes by working with practice, drawing, writ ing, conversation, scores, maps, films, materials and other active materials. - Yanira Castro (USA)

ARTIST DEVELOPMENT

_IN RESIDENCE

SPACE GRANTS

SUMMER INTENSIVES - IMMERSIONS SUMMER INTENSIVES – Feb 22-March 4 Jo Lloyd, Hellen Sky, Paea Leach, Becky Hilton, Gideon Obarzanek, Tim Darbyshire, Victoria Chiu, Yumi Unimare, Gülsen Özer, Gregory Lorenzutti. LEARNING CURVE - GENERATE: CHOREOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION THROUGH YOGA Myriam Gourfink (FR) CURATED WORKSHOPS/MASTERCLASSES/CAPACITY BUILDING INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOPS Deborah Jowitt (USA) - Keir Choreographic Award Public Program Adam Linder (GE)- Keir Choreographic Award Public Program Philipp Gehmacher (GE) - Keir Choreographic Award Public Program Chrysa Parkinson (SE/USA) - Keir Choreographic Award Public Program Sarah Michelson (USA) - Keir Choreographic Award Public Program Myriam Gourfink (FR) - Learning Curve NEXT STAGES Capacity Building Workshops – July 21 - August 11 How to Organise Your First Season - Kristy Ayre and James Bachelor How to Write & Speak About Your Work - Becky Hilton and Veronica Bolzon Understanding Figures & Planning Realisticallly - Josh Wright & Natalie Cursio Pitching and Networking - Annette Vieusseux and Angela Conquet ROOM TO MOVE - PRUE LANG - STELLAR PROJECT - May 6 - CHLOE CHIGNELL - SOFT REALITY - June 3 - SECOND ECHO ENSEMBLE - CONTESTED LAND - July 1 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

SUMMER SPACE GRANTS - 30 hour space grants Jacqueline Aylward, Belle Frahn-Starkie, Jonnie Havakis, Thomas Woodman & Ruben Stoney (collective), Nebahat Erpolat, Gülsen Özer, Caitlin Dear QUICK RESPONSE SPACE GRANTS - 15 hour space grants Gülsen Özer, Jo Lloyd, Natasha Phillips YOU AND DANCEHOUSE YOUR WAY OPEN SEASONS MELBOURNE FRINGE 2016 Paul Jesseph Base Hickman ISM (21-24 September) AWKWARD CONNECTIONS double bill (22-24 September) Rikki Bremner HOW TO CON-NECT Sarah Chaffey, Scott Elstermann and Ezgi Gungor IT’S GETTING AWKWARD Irina Kuzminsky DANCING WITH DARK GODDESSES (29 September - 1 October) BRAINCHILD double bill (29 September - 1 October) Samantha Crameri-Miller LOW EXPECTATIONS Cameron Lansdown-Goodman PRINCIPLE OF CAUSATION COMMUNITY EVENTS AN ODYSSEY OF ODISSI DANCE - April 4 SWING PATROL - August 6 THRILL THE WORLD - October 29 LA VERITE - November 12 INDIGO DANCE - December 9 www.dancehouse.com.au | www.dancehousediary.com.au

2016 ARTISTIC PROGRAM IN A SNAPSHOT PUBLIC PROGRAMS

ONLINE CONTENT

KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD PUBLIC PROGRAM WORKSHOPS Deborah Jowitt, Adam Linder, Philipp Gehmacher, Chrysa Parkinson, Sarah Michelson LECTURES/DIALOGUE EXPERIENTIAL AUTHORSHIP, A PRACTICE - Chrysa Parkinson in conversation with Becky Hilton - April 2 THE PERSISTENCE OF PERFORMANCE - Lecture & Conversation with Adrian Heathfield - April 5 WALK & TALK NO.19 - Lecture-performance with Philipp Gehmacher - April 6 CONVERSATIONS THE BODY. NOW. at Victorian College of the Arts - April 26-29 THE COMING OF THE BODY (April 27) in partnership with DISSECT - Anastasia Klose, Atlanta Eke, Zoe Theodore in conversation with Audrey Schmidt EXHIBITING CHOREOGRAPHY (April 28) Sarah Michelson in conversation with Becky Hilton THE MONEY ISSUE (April 29) with Fionna Winning and Anitra Nelson in conversation with Angela Conquet CHOREOGRAPHING EXHIBITIONS (April 30) Pierre Bal Blanc in conversation with Hannah Mathews

AUDIO

VIDEO

AUDIO STAGE Dancehouse and AUDIO STAGE to devised a series of five conversations in resonance with our programs. CHRYSA PARKINSON (April 24) DEBORAH JOWITT (June 5) BOJANA CVEJIC (August 29) SARAH-JANE NORMAN (October 30) MATTHEW DAY (November 23) THE BODY. NOW. CONVERSATION SERIES THE COMING OF THE BODY (April 27) EXHIBITING CHOREOGRAPHY (April 28) THE MONEY ISSUE (April 29) CHOREOGRAPHING EXHIBITIONS (April 30) IN-HOUSE ARTIST INTERVIEWS Matthew Day Sarah-Jane Norman & Nacera Belaza

FESTIVITIES & CELEBRATIONS

WRITINGS

KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD SEMI FINALS PARTY Dancehouse hosted the Keir Choreographic Award Semi-Finals Party on April 30

DANCEHOUSE DIARY – Dancehouse’s print and online publication connecting dance and other art forms to society issues and to a wider audience DD#9 – THE MONEY ISSUE – DANCE AND ETHICS - March COMMISSIONED TEXT How do we pay attention? Alison Croggon commissioned text for Matthew Day’s Housemate season, Assemblage #1 - October

DANCE MASSIVE PROGRAM LAUNCH Dancehouse hosted the Dance Massive Pogram Launch Party on November 24 MOBILITY

YOUTH PROGRAM ROTARY YOUTH ARTS PROGRAM – An after-school programs of dance workshops for disadvantaged young people, over 4 months with a public showing led by SARAH AIKEN and Emily Davidson (July - Sept)

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

DANCEHOUSE INTERNATIONAL – cultivates a selective international network of relationships which grows strategic and meaningful alliances, mutual exchange programs and circulation of new ideas. THREE AUSTRALIANS IN XAVIER LE ROY’S, ‘TEMPORARY TITLE’, PARIS ALICE HEYWARD AT BASSANO CHOREOGRAPHIC WEEK MARIA HASSABI - STAGED (co-commission by The Keir Foundation with Dancehouse)

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD SEMI-FINALS presented by DANCEHOUSE, CARRIAGEWORKS & THE KEIR FOUNDATION with AUSTRALIA COUNCIL

Looking at what these the works of the second edition of the Keir Award investigate, we thought we may be looking here at the future of dance. All works seemed to explore the moving body as thinking, embodied matter positioned at the intersection of time and history; of space and the politics of their context; of the inner self and our ensconcement in social media. Manifestos for or against spectacle, constructions or simulations and disappearances, building parallel imagined realities, which at times forged better possibilities and at other times, a disquieting projection of our being and actings upon the world. Choreography is often about framing the interconnectedness that our bodies have in relation to politics, ethics, space and time. It may not be the future of dance that was explored here but it certainly is an interrogation of new models of subjectivity and corporeality. If not the future, then certainly becomings.

The Keir Choreographic Award is Australia’s first major choreographic award, biannually presented by The Keir Foundation, Carriageworks and Dancehouse with the Australia Council. The Keir Choreographic Award is dedicated to commissioning new choreographic work and promoting innovative, experimental and crossart form practice in contemporary dance. Eight commissioned works had their premiere season at Melbourne’s Dancehouse in late April 2016. Four of the works were then selected by the jury to participate in the Sydney season presented by Carriageworks in May 2016. The eight commissioned artists competed for the accolade of the award including a cash prize of $30,000 for first prize and $10,000 for an audience choice prize that was voted by Sydney audiences. PROGRAM ONE - APRIL 26, 28, 30 CHLOE CHIGNELL MARTIN HANSEN SARAH AIKEN ALICE HEYWARD PROGRAM TWO - APRIL 27, 29, 30 REBECCA JENSEN JAMES BATCHELOR GHENOA GELA PAEA LEACH Jury: Sarah Michelson, Wendy Martin, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Phillip Keir, Atlanta Eke, Bojana Cvejić Finalists: Martin Hansen, Sarah Aiken, Rebecca Jensen, Ghenoa Gela Winner: Ghenoa Gela

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

IF IT’S ALL IN MY VEINS MARTIN HANSEN APRIL 26, 28, 30 Choreographer: Martin Hansen Performers: Hellen Sky, Maxine Palmerson, Michelle Ferris

BEFORE THE FACT ALICE HEYWARD APRIL 26, 28, 30 Choreographer & Performer: Alice Heyward Collaborators: Ilya Milstein, Gregor Kompar, Matthew Adey

Berlin-based Martin Hansen’s work if it’s all in my veins questions constructions of time and history, focusing on the spectacle of the theatre. Here, Martin looks to the Accelerationist Manifesto, which suggests that the process of capitalism should be accelerated to reach its inevitable demise. if its all in my veins is choreography at the intersection of time, the body and performance history, questioning linear progression and inviting new possibilities. Martin’s work is ultimately open-ended. He interrogates how we can envision our dance’s future if we proclaim it is no longer possible to think through ‘a’ future? Would dance history be over? Where do we direct our fiery optimism? What other histories might it give way to? Be optimistic.

Alice Heyward locates her choreography at the nexus of language and movement. Before The Fact is a piece that has arisen ‘from page to stage’, taking its cues from imagined dance notation drawings by Melbourne illustrator Ilya Milstein. Alice’s work represents choreography performed in the future tense - a future perfect – involving dances which re-enact Ilya’s fictitious notations. Inverting the relationship between the work and its trace, Alice re-frames history, creating an archive of fragmentary movements, from a dance which is mercurial and forever unfinished. With costumes by Sarah CrowEST and songwriting by Gregor Kompar, Alice’s work expands the boundaries of choreography, delving into visual, aural and textual forms.

MARTIN HANSEN is a 2014 graduate of the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin. In collaboration with Ania Nowak, he was the HOUSEMATE RESEARCH artist at Dancehouse, Melbourne in 2014 and premiered A Queer Kind of Evidence at Tanztage 2015. Martin presented Monumental at Tanznacht 2014, PACT Zollverein, Semper Oper Dresden and Ballhaus Ost. With Kareth Schaffer, Martin developed and performed in Other Dreams, an artistic tour of Gropiustadt, B-Tours Berlin 2015. Martin has performed with Tino Sehgal, Sebastian Mathias, Christoph Winkler, Jeremy Wade, Sebastian Blasius, Ligia Lewis, Laurie Young, among others. He was named ‘Dancer of the Year’ by Tanz Magazin in 2012, was a danceWEB scholar in 2013 and was the Origin Foundation Scholarship winner in 2014. In 2015, Martin received the Einstiegs Forderrung from the Berliner Senate, and ArtStart funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. Before moving to Germany, Martin toured internationally with Chunky Move, Not Yet Its Difficult and Hydra Poesis.

ALICE HEYWARD is a dancer, choreographer and writer. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance in 2013. Alice has performed in Europe and Australia in works choreographed by Xavier Le Roy & Scarlet Yu, Alexandra Pirici, Mia Lawrence, Maria Hassabi, Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, Stefan Dreher, Hana Erdman, Becky Hilton, Geoffrey Watson, Timothy Walsh and Chloe Chignell, among others at Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Venice Biennale (College Danza) ‘15, Carriageworks (Sydney), Berlin Art Week ‘15, Meinblau Gallery (Berlin), Index Gallery (Stockholm), ‘Think Big’ festival (Munich), ‘DANCE 2015’ festival (Munich), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melb), Le Mouvement – Performing the City (Biel), Pieces for Small Spaces at Lucy Guerin Inc. (Melb) and more. Alice was selected for the danceWEB Scholarship Programme 2016 in the frame of ImPulsTanz–Vienna International Dance Festival. She has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts with an ArtStart grant (2014), and by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust (2015) to expand her practice internationally. She received the 2014 VCA Graduate Mentorship Scholarship to produce Now Is Not The Place at Murray White Room in February 2016, with Sandra Parker’s mentorship. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD DEEP SHINE CHLOE CHIGNELL APRIL 26, 28, 30 Choreographer & Performer: Chloe Chignell Performers: Ellen Davies, Bhenji Ra

FRAGMENTS OF MALUNGOKA - WOMEN OF THE SEA GHENOA GELA APRIL 27, 29, 30 Concept & Choreography: Ghenoa Gela Performers: Elle Evangelista, Melanie Palomares, Melinda Tyquin

In Deep Shine, Chloe Chignell looks to locate choreography on the surface of the body, where shine resides. In a world where everything is made to be seen, where glossy surfaces and high definition images form our landscape, Chloe positions shininess as a condition of contemporary society. Invading all spaces and intensifying superficiality, Deep Shine elevates the spectacle of shine and surface. With Deep Shine, Chloe presents a protest for the spectacle, and questions through an upheaval of glitter and gloss the kinds of empathy and affect possible between shiny bodies.

In Fragments of Malungoka - Women of the Sea, Sydney-based Ghenoa Gela explores her female ancestry in the Western Torres Strait. As a Mainland-born Torres Strait Islander woman, Ghenoa is questioning the role of traditional Torres Strait Islander dance when performed by non-Torres Strait dancers and viewed by non-Torres Strait Islander audiences. Ghenoa’s work draws on the stories of her female relatives, and recollections of community life. Sharing her culture with an ensemble of women, Ghenoa integrates traditional influences with contemporary movement and technology. Fragments of Malungoka gives the audience permission to play with perspective in the theatre space, whilst momentarily viewing the world through the eyes of a performer caught between two cultures.

CHLOE CHIGNELL is a dance artist based in Melbourne. She has recently undertaken the DanceWEB scholarship program at ImPulsTanz in Vienna. Chloe received an Ian Potter Travel Grant and ArtStart in 2015, enabling her to extend her choreographic practice through international travel and studio research. As a performer, Chloe has worked for The Planet, performed at ImPulsTanz and Indigo Dance Festival at PAF. She has recently worked with Atlanta Eke on Miss Universal, presented by Chunky Move and Gertrude Contemporary. She also performed in Aphids’ Forever Now at MONA. Chloe has been working for James Batchelor for a number of years performing in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. In 2014, she choreographed POST PHASE: The Summit is Blue presented in Melbourne’s Fringe Festival and at The Canberra Theatre. Chloe co-curates Dance Speaks, a performance lecture program. She was a part of the Writers workshop for Dance Massive 2015, and was the VCA Professional Pathways intern at Dancehouse throughout 2014-15.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

GHENOA GELA is an independent Sydney-based performing artist and a proud Torres Strait Islander woman from Rockhampton. She has worked across several mediums such as Dance, Circus, Television and Stage. Some of her credits include: Force Majeure Nothing to Lose (Sydney Festival 2015, Melbourne Season 2015), Winds of Woerr (Melbourne Next Wave Festival 2014, Spirit Festival 2015), Dance Site Festival (2012/2015), Move it Mob Style TV Series - Deadly Vibe Australia (ABC3, NITV 2011-2014), My Darling Patricia The Piper (Sydney Festival 2014, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015), Circus Oz From the Ground Up (National & International Tour 2012/2013), Shaun Parker Happy As Larry (National & International Tour 2011/2012). Ghenoa facilitates dance workshops in various styles from urban to remote communities and is very inspired by her family’s stories and wants to increase awareness of her Torres Strait Islander culture through dance. Ghenoa’s most recent adventure saw her collaborating with Force Majeure’s Danielle Micich, on Mura Buai Everyone, Everyone (Performance Space Liveworks Festival 2015). She aspires to inspire.

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD REBECCA JENSEN APRIL 27, 29, 30 Choreographer & Performer: Rebecca Jensen Performers: André Augustus, Matthew Adey, Michael McNab

INHABITED GEOMETRIES JAMES BATCHELOR APRIL 27, 29, 30 Choreographer & Performer: James Batchelor Performer: Morgan Hickinbotham

Explorer is an expedition with an unknown destination. Rebecca Jensen becomes a tourist within and beyond her body. The theatre is the landscape. There is activity between simulation and disappearance; encounters between surfaces; and a blurring of the boundaries between multiple realities. Explorer may be a new kind of wilderness. The strategy for its discovery? Don’t stop dancing, ever.

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

JAMES BATCHELOR is an award winning Melbourne based choreographer with a performance practice in dance and visual arts. His projects examine the interactions between humans and the environment via a rigorous process of documentation and physical translation. Batchelor’s projects take him from densely populated urban environments to some of the most remote and inaccessible places in the world. METASYSTEMS documents the radical transformation of urban environments through the study of construction labourers working on sites in Australia, Asia and Europe. METASYSTEMS was originally commissioned for the inaugural Keir Choreographic Award and has since been presented in Canberra, Melbourne and Bangkok and is currently touring in France, Italy and China. ISLAND (winner of the ACT Arts Award Dance 2014 and Green Room Award for Concept and Realisation 2014) is an installation documenting utopian experimentation in the world’s most remote islands. Batchelor’s projects invest significant time in research and observation, using performance as a tool to inspire critical thought and reflection on the contemporary world.

REBECCA JENSEN is a Melbourne based choreographer and dancer, born in New Zealand (1988). She studied at the Victorian College of the Arts. Rebecca has presented work at Next Wave Festival and Dance Massive with Sarah Aiken (OVERWORLD 2014); Melbourne Fringe Festival (POSE BAND 2015), Lucy Guerin Inc’s Pieces for Small Spaces (Within An Inner 2011); MONAFOMA Festival club, Ponderosa Tanzland (Germany) and Dallas Texas Woman’s University (Head Back 2012). She is a founding member of Deep Soulful Sweats Fantasy Light Yoga (Festival Of Live Art, Dark MOFO, Tiny Stadiums, Chunky Move, Next Wave Festival). Australia Council for the Arts Art Start grant and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant have enabled Rebecca to expand her practice in New York and Europe. She was a DanceWEB scholarship recipient. Notable appearences include work with Jo Lloyd, Sandra Parker, Natalie Abbott, Balletlab, Luke George, Shian Law, Sarah Aiken, Janine Proost, Brooke Stamp with Aphids, Ben Speth, Zoe Scoglio and Liz Dunn, Mårten Spångberg, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Kate Neal and Andras Fox.

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

Inhabited Geometries reflects James Batchelor’s interests in the confrontation between the body and external structures. James is engaged with the relationship between the inside and outside of the body, with its notions of outer exposure and inner solace. In his research for the work, James spent time on the streets of Melbourne, searching for comfort within the hard edges and crystalline forms of the city landscape. This resulting work, Inhabited Geometries, explores the slippery relationship between the roundness of the body and skin, against the stark geometry of the city. A connection between surfaces occurs: edges are softened, skin melts, inner and outer coincide.

EXPLORER 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD ONE AND ONE AND ONE PAEA LEACH APRIL 27, 29, 30 Choreographer & Performer: Paea Leach Performers: Rhiannon Newton, Candy Royalle

SARAH AIKEN (TOOLS FOR PERSONAL EXPANSION) SARAH AIKEN APRIL 26, 28, 30 Choreographer & Performer: Sarah Aiken Performers: Claire Leske, Emily Robinson, Daniel Arnott

Paea Leach’s work is driven by the poetics of the body and the physicality of language. one and one and one is a trio for two dancers and one poet, in which the rhythms of poetry become a score activating the dancers’ movements. Paea’s choreography encourages the language of poetry to move through, between and within the body. Meaning becomes disrupted, opened up, challenged and changed. Paea looks to the dancing body as an ethical force, a way to regenerate thought and action against the demands placed on the body by contemporary society. Her work becomes ‘an effort to speak to and for many bodies… Political, personal, dispersed: danced’.

Sarah Aiken’s work absorbs and extends space. In Sarah Aiken (Tools for Personal Expansion), Sarah’s choreography transgresses the limits of her body to consider the politics and possibilities of space, reworking the self through social, digital and physical means. In this work, Sarah examines the ways in which our physicality, including digital, conditions the manners in which we project ourselves and act upon the world. Whether large or small, the body’s relationship to space is both personal and political. Sarah uses people, devices, technology and matter, as well as movement, to extend her reach to contract, expand and multiply personal power.

Image Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

SARAH AIKEN is a Melbourne based performer, choreographer and teacher originally from Bellingen, NSW. Sarah pursues an ongoing interest in how and what we value, utilising dichotomies and clashes, aiming to create poignancy through absurdity. Through solo and collaborative practice, her work investigates the roles of audience, performer, subject and object. Performance credits include work by Maria Hassabi, Natalie Abbott, Jo Lloyd, Shian Law, Carlee Mellow, James Welsby, Brooke Stamp and Aphids, Deanne Butterworth/ Linda Tegg, Ben Speth and Eliza Dyball. Sarah’s choreographic work includes SET (Dancehouse Housemate Residency 2015) Three Short Dances (Keir Choreographic Award, Dancehouse, Carriageworks 2014), Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie. Paris, 2015, Artshouse 10th Anniversary 2015), Set (Lucy Guerin Inc. Piece’s for Small Spaces, 2013, EDC Solo Festival of Dance 2014), Jurassic Arc (Dancehouse, Melbourne Fringe 2012, K77, Berlin 2012), as well as a range of collaborative and interdisciplinary projects across music, live art, film, photography and visual arts. Together with Rebecca Jensen, Sarah has created OVERWORLD (Next Wave Festival 2014, Dance Massive 2015), Deep Soulful Sweats; a participatory, yogic, disco (Next Wave Festival/ Speakeasy 2014, FOLA 2014, Dark MOFO 2014, Chunky Move (ongoing) and Upacara/Ritual (Dark MOFO 2015).

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

PAEA LEACH has pursued and developed a choreographic practice and voice with a hybrid collection of makers and thinkers. The body as a site of research, the integration/interrogation of language in process and encountering the ‘real’ in performance are strong motivators. Recently, she undertook a residency with Rhiannon Newton TRIP in Tasmania, co-created Beast #3 for Move Me improvisation festival (Perth, 2014) and was commissioned by Chunky Move’s Next Move season – making ‘the lines of birds’ in collaboration with experimental musicians Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, her first site-specific dance-work (2014). She collaborated with Dr Jodie Mc Neilly (Phd Philosophy/choreography) on a solo work Babylon’ for Dance Meets Music (Sydney and presented a solo as part of IOU Independent dance makers at UNSW – a meditation on performance, honesty and ‘enoughness’ following a huge injury (2013). As a young choreographer, she made multiple short experimental works through STRUT (Perth) and produced the SOLOS project with Dr Simmon Ellis and Shanon Bott (2004-2006). She was an Asialink recipient 2011 in Cambodia and has been harnessing ‘writing-dancing’ with Jo Pollitt for six years. She has worked extensively (15 years) as a performer and collaborator in Australia and Europe, most recently touring with EASTMAN/Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (2010-2014, Belgium).

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD - PUBLIC PROGRAM PRACTICE EXPANDING MOVEMENT, AMPLIFYING THOUGHT Choreography has been used recently in an ever-expanding sense, inviting a rethinking and reframing of relations between space and time but most particularly of language, presence, aesthetics and authorship. The Keir Choreographic Award Public Program, conceived in resonance with the Melbourne Semi-Finals, aimed precisely at contextualising the deep and subtle connections that the choreographed body fosters, in its multiplicity of forms and meanings, with the social, the ethical and the political. This public program, which ran from March to April, brought together the remarkable KCA jury as well as some of the finest minds of dance thinking and making whom we had the privilege of sharing with the Sydney Biennale. Together, we looked at the current field of discourse and investigation related to the proliferation of living bodies in exhibition spaces, the politics of these new curatorial practices, the new sites of effect and affect opened by choreography, and diverse modes of understanding how movement is politically and aesthetically activated. We also had the immense honour of hosting a workshop led by the iconic Deborah Jowitt, arguably the most world-renowned dance critic and author. For years, she has been the voice of New York dance criticism with regular columns in the Village Voice and New York Times. Deborah led a workshop on critical dance writing - for arts writers, critics and those simply interested in how dance can be critically reviewed.

The Keir Choreographic Award Dancehouse Public Program is presented by Dancehouse in partnership with the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Lucy Guerin Inc. and Deakin University and in association with the 20th Biennale of Sydney.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

ADAM LINDER Adam Linder led a collaborative workshop at Dancehouse that interrogated the meeting of the critical (supposedly objective or rational) with the expressive – the over-linguistic meeting the pre-linguistic. PHILIPP GEHMACHER Philipp Gehmacher offered insight to his current questions and concerns as an artist, working through issues of physicality, materiality and live performance - physically and theoretically. CHRYSA PARKINSON in partnership with Lucy Guerin Inc. This workshop aimed at adding to the ongoing process of skillful perception by engaging with submerged fictions, performance modes and movement through physical performance practices. SARAH MICHELSON in partnership with Lucy Guerin Inc. This workshop was a chance for for participants to spend some time with Sarah in order to try to understand how intentions, in this moment, are always viewed in relation to dance making and choreographic practice.

WRITING WORKSHOP

with DEBORAH JOWITT (USA) 25-29 APRIL

“Dance doesn’t hang on walls or sit on shelves; little of it is available online; its material as human beings. Those of us addicted to writing about it must catch it on the fly and remember it long enough to convey its essence and our response in words. This workshop, we’ll read and discuss reviews written by the participants about dances shown during the KCA season. The schedule will also include viewing video clips of dances and exchanging ideas about them and the issues they raise. I anticipate challenges and discoveries about perception, interpretation, and writing in whatever dancerelated careers we have chosen.” - Deborah Jowitt Open to dance critics/reviewers, arts writers, arts journalists, arts bloggers and dance practitioners interested in writing on dance, Deborah Jowitt led a workshop where participants read and discussed reviews written by one another about dances shown during the KCA season. The schedule also included viewing video clips of dances and exchanging ideas about them and the issues they raise. Participants: Jana Perkovic, Philippa Hawker, Susan Bendall, Alice Cummins, Alison Finn, Andrew Fuhrmann, Philipa Rothfield, Jordan-Beth Vincent, Christine Babinskas, Gillian Butcher, Megan Payne, Stephanie Glickman, Katrina Italiano. www.dancehouse.com.au | www.dancehousediary.com.au

KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD - PUBLIC PROGRAM LECTURE-PERFORMANCE/CONVERSATIONS

THE BODY. NOW. CONVERSATION SERIES

WALK & TALK NO.19 with PHILIPP GEHMACHER Philipp Gehmacher conceived the lecture performance format walk + talk for his curated series STILL MOVING at Tanzquartier Wien in 2008. Ten artists took upon themselves the challenge to intertwine on stage movement with language. walk+talk is intended as a format neither fully written nor improvised but rather a meandering score that needs to be instantiated to create presence.

WRITING CRITICALLY ON DANCE (April 26) Deborah Jowitt in conversation with Alison Croggon

“Speaking whilst moving means speaking about your actions, to verbalise what takes place momentarily and what manifests itself physically and mentally. walk sketches the time that passes when movement expands in space. talk refers to the idea of stating, the announcement, the speaking out as much about the complexity of our own pronounced truths that simultaneously win and lose in the instant of expression.” - Philipp Gehmancher. _IN CONVERSATION - CHRYSA PARKINSON WITH BECKY HILTON EXPERIENTIAL AUTHORSHIP, A PRACTICE During this talk, Chrysa Parkinson worked to disenchant, disembowel and reify these five words: Signature, Comprehension, Constitution, Plasticity and The Glitch. “Finding plasticity in the border between what I’m included in and what I’m made up of allows a productive gap that produces a particular, specific agency, giving and taking form. This is an ongoing, volatile practice, rife with glitches.” - Chrysa Parkinson

THE COMING OF THE BODY (April 27) in partnership with DISSECT - Anastasia Klose, Atlanta Eke, Zoe Theodore in conversation with Audrey Schmidt EXHIBITING CHOREOGRAPHY (April 28) Sarah Michelson in conversation with Becky Hilton THE MONEY ISSUE (April 29) with Fionna Winning and Anitra Nelson in conversation with Angela Conquet CHOREOGRAPHING EXHIBITIONS (April 30) Pierre Bal Blanc in conversation with Hannah Mathews

AUDIO STAGE PODCASTS CHRYSA PARKINSON - THE VALUE OF DANCE AS PRACTICE Angela Conquet and Jana Perkovic speak to Chrysa Parkinson on the creativity of the dancer: the work of dance, the authorship of the dancer, and whether excessive praise is how we pay artists in lieu of a living wage. DEBORAH JOWITT - THE VALUE OF DANCE CRITICISM Angela Conquet and Jana Percovic speak to Deborah Jowitt, legendary dance critic, about her immensely influential body of work and the importance of dance criticism.

LECTURE & CONVERSATION with ADRIAN HEATHFIELD THE PERSISTENCE OF PERFORMANCE “How do recent innovative shifts in curatorial practice - the exhibition as artwork, the artist as curator, the artwork as durational event – address history, contemporaneity and accelerated life? What is the relation between the aesthetics of ‘stasis’ and latency and the generation of unknown futures?” - Adrian Heathfield

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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DANCEHOUSE INVITES SMALL DETAILS SANDRA PARKER (VIC) 18-20 March

Melbourne based choreographer SANDRA PARKER is the recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts Dance Board Fellowship and a Centenary Medal for Services to Australian Society and Dance. Recent projects include the in-progress showing of Gender/Power Composition IV with NY artists Kris Grey and Maya Ciarrocchi, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space, NY, 2015; work-in-progress presentation of Small Details, Dance Massive Open Studios, 2015; Three Angles (2014), an interactive single-channel video installation, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; Three Frames (2013), two video channels, sound, live performance, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, US; The Recording (2013), live performance, Dance Massive, Melbourne; Live View, live performance and binaural (headphones) sound (2013), Document (2011), Dancehouse, Melbourne; Transit (2010), Horti Hall, Melbourne, 2010, Melbourne Festival 2012, Faits d’hiver, Paris, 2013; Out of Light (2009), Gasworks, Melbourne, and The View From Here (2007), Joyce Soho, New York.

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti

A new live performance, Small Details extends the focus in Sandra Parker’s practice on minimal movement and gestural action. The work uses a series of automated kinetic sculptures set against dense and intricate choreography. Selected gestures are performed in extreme detail and in repetitious cycles: the work’s duration testing the performers’ and audience’s capacity to meet the demands of the choreographic system. At its apex, where precision and fixity break, the work attunes attention beyond the choreographic logic, to focus on the vulnerabilities, limitations and potentials of the body in an automated and technologically advanced world.

METADATA DE QUINCEY CO. (NSW) 9-10 September METADATA is an immersive performance work comprising two connected pieces created by leading dance, video, sound and animation artists from Melbourne and Sydney. Probing the latest developments in physics and cosmology a team of leading interdisciplinary artists explore a universe of shifting patterns, inviting you to delve into an intimate yet epic world where the intangible becomes substantial and real. PURE LIGHT – dancer Tess de Quincey; music Pimmon; video Martin Fox As a homage to the fluorescent light installations of American minimalist artist Dan Flavin (1933-96), a space is sculpted by light that reverberates with colour and explores impermanence. The human figure is revealed within lines that repeat and transform into a series of icons to then seep into shimmering surfaces and architectural planes. Fields of visual and sound particles form and reform, constantly reframing and stretching the body into ambiguous shapes. Subtle tones combine with ironic twists to mock tradition and capture pure feeling. MOTHS & MATHEMATICS – dancers Peter Fraser & Tess de Quincey; music Warren Burt; visual animation Boris Morris Bagattini

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

In an unfolding of the space between two beings, mathematical relationships are explored. The bodies are shaped by an environment of visual animation that reveals microscopic realms and catapults into a monumental universe of immense scale. The musical composition exposes a layering of mathematical structures that echo musical traditions from Bach to Conlon Nancarrow and Ryoji Ikeda whilst exploring new forms through sound, body and light. Rigorous and simple, yet complex and multifaceted, this is a world of correlations and disturbances, where tempestuous weather and empathetic calms shape vital rhythms and harmonics. www.dancehouse.com.au | www.dancehousediary.com.au

DANCE TERRITORIES - BORDER LINES (Melbourne Festival) 14-16 October Dance Territories is Dancehouse’s biennial program presented in association with Melbourne Festival. The innovative premise of Dance Territories, now in its third edition, is to pair an independent Australian with an international artist in a double-bill, creating a multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural dialogue in relation to a shared theme. NACERA BELAZA The Shout & SARAH-JANE NORMAN The River’s Children & Take this for it is my body PLACE - the places we come from, the places we find ourselves, the places we dream of and the borders between them, shape and define our identity. The 2016 edition of Dance Territories, BORDER LINES, focused on the relationship of ‘body’ to ‘border’, explicitly exploring the impact migration, circulation, invasion and dis-location has had, and continues to have, on personal and cultural identity.

Image credit: Phebe Schmidt for Dancehouse

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

THE RIVER’S CHILDREN & TAKE THIS FOR IT IS MY BODY SARAH JANE NORMAN

THE SHOUT NACERA BELAZA

Durational performance and installation

Choreography: Nacera Belaza Performance: Nacera Belaza, Dalila Belaza Light: Éric Soyer Sound Design: Christophe Renaud Sound and Video Conception: Nacera Belaza

Concept: Sarah-Jane Norman Performance: Sarah-Jane Norman, Carly Sheppard, Suze Smith Sound Recordist: Ivan Crozier Sound & Video Editing: Kiesia Carmine Dance Territories Technicians: Suze Smith, James O’Donoghue, Bec Etchell and Tony Day, led by Van Locker In The River’s Children and Take this for it is my body, Sarah-Jane Norman collapses the personal into the political, exploring the impact Australia’s brutal colonial history has had on their particular body - the body of the artist, their ‘performing’ body, in front of the spectator’s ‘watching’ body.

The Shout is a duet performed by Nacera Belaza and her sister that observes the interplay between sacred ritual and globalization. In the repetition of gesture and the elongation of time, Nacera Belaza’s pieces all explore movement as one would explore a calm and continuous breath. Belaza’s power resides in the intensity of the seemingly insignificant, allowing for an experience of the sensible and revealing an astounding poetry, evoking imagery in the absence of representation.

In The River’s Children, the audience are invited to contribute white articles of clothing for Norman to wash in the water of the Murray River, which runs through their own ancestral country, and is also the site of some of the earliest and most violent clashes between free settlers and First Australians. For Take this, for it is my body, the artist infuses a basic scone mixture with their own blood, before baking the scones and offering them to the audience - referencing Christian rituals and belief systems as well as the equally hallowed ritual of a farmhouse afternoon tea. With the additional support of the Australia Council for the Arts

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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HOUSEMATE XV PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY ASSEMBLAGE #1 MATTHEW DAY 23-27 November Dancehouse presented the world premiere of Assemblage #1, a new Housemate artist-inresidence production by Australia’s pre-eminent boundary-pushing choreographer Matthew Day. Straight off the back of receiving his Master’s in Choreography from the renowned DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam, he came back to Melbourne to present an original and compelling work which was four years in the making. Assemblage #1, presented in two different formats, harnessed an impassioned commitment to the present moment, moving in multiple directions simultaneously to raise questions about instinct, animality, catastrophe and excess.

The Dancehouse Housemate program supports rigorous discourse, research and wide-ranging experimentation in all movementbased forms so as to nurture new choreographic expression for new forms and contexts. The Housemate Residency is about accompanying dance artists through the entire creative process, from vision to realisation. The program offers time to explore, space to examine possibility and the terrain to be audacious. It is also Dancehouse’s commitment to the future of dance in Australia and to those who re-shape and re-invent choreographic thought for bodies in movement. Matthew Day was our Housemate XV.

Commissioned and produced by Dancehouse, Assemblage #1 unleashed an environment of play and surrender. Wearing a light grey jogging tracksuit, Matthew Day used energetic intensity and stillness, duration and repetition, to activate a field of relations between materials, actions, movements and perceptions. Challenging traditional notions of perception, object and body, Day proposed audacious alternatives to experiences of being together. MATTHEW DAY (1979) is interested in the potential of choreography to imagine unorthodox relationships and propose new ways of being human. Utilising a minimalist approach, Day often works with duration and repetition, approaching the body as a site of infinite potential and choreography as a field of energetic intensity and exchange. Day’s work is invested in the proliferate potential of choreography to contribute unique forms of knowledge to cultural discourse and enable affective experiences. He draws heavily from the visual arts, in particular painting and cinema, which challenge traditional notions of image, object and body. Raised in Sydney, Matthew was a teenage ballroom dancing champion. He went on to study Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Western Sydney and at the Victorian College of the Arts, before collaborating with students at the School for New Dance Development, NL. Day has been artist in residence, and presented his work extensively in Australia and Europe. Dancehouse presented all three works of his TRILOGY

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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HOUSEMATE XV PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY HOW DO WE PAY ATTENTION? I don’t know what you’re about to see. I know it will have certain shapes, certain colours, certain sounds, perhaps certain smells. It will occur within a landscape mapped out in a room, scattered with a miscellany of objects – fruit, items of clothing, construction materials. As with all landscapes, what happens within it occurs in time, and is unpredictable. Someone moves through a landscape and changes it, and is changed by it. Day offers us two possibilities of engagement. In one, we sit and watch a fifty minute performance. In the other, a three hour performance, we may walk in and out at will, investigate a reading room, behave as we might in a public space. In both performances, the doors are open. Like all performances, it’s an invitation. It asks for our attention. Perhaps it asks whether this is a performance at all, since Matthew Day may be responding purely spontaneously to the materials he has assembled. There may be movements that appear like a concentrated impulse of the moment, introduced as casually as the way we might unconsciously brush a fly off our face, that blur the borders of finished and unfinished. The finishedness of all art is an illusion, after all. It is always, as Marcel Duchamp said of The Bride Stripped Bare, “finally unfinished”, a process that has reached a temporal pause. Day offers us a place of suspension between before and later, a chance to inhabit the ambiguity of the present. A man walks into a space, and his presence in that space gradually transforms it. Our presence in that space transforms him. He is very alone: he has only his materials to play with, the curiosity of his body. We are here to observe him. He has his thirst and his hunger, his bananas and Berocca, his costumings of masculinity, his Bunnings building materials, his blankets and caps, his precarious contructions. He is a little comic, a little sad, joyous, fragile. He is constantly struggling against gravity, which never goes away, but which may grant him some respite. Or perhaps not. I don’t know what you are going to see. Day resists representation, but a human being on a stage is always a metaphor from the moment he or she appears, in those ambiguous moments when we begin to understand that a performance is taking place. A metaphor is something that is at once literally and figuratively true. It is about likeness. He is like us, and he is unlike us, both at once. A metaphor is not an illusion. It is a moment of disruption in which relationships are created between things that are like and unlike each other, an instability created in our perception. A moment of what Day calls “subtle incitement”. There is no illusion in this performance. The process of making it is absolutely apparent: everything we see is made before our eyes. The artist turns on the sound. The artist controls the light. The artist manipulates objects. Nothing is hidden, and everything we see is ordinary. Mystery hides inside the ordinary. The unsensational, the apparently transparent, holds within it the fascination of the unknown. If we release our constant, panicky demands for crude sensation, perhaps we can sit inside the ordinariness of ourselves and be surprised. Perhaps this possibility of ordinary mystery is a place of radical importance. Perhaps it is something that that we must decolonise from consumability. Perhaps we should pay attention to the silence – the sadness, the delight, the desire, the mystery – that exists inside us all. Do we pay attention? How do we pay attention? COMMISSIONED TEXT Alison Croggon on Matthew Day’s Housemate season, Assemblage #1 - October.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse.

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HOUSEMATE XV PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY PUBLIC PROGRAM - ASSEMBLING ASSEMBLAGE #1 LECTURE/CONVERSATION: AN ASSEMBLAGE TO COME NOVEMBER 15 This lecture-conversation by Matthew Day in conversation with Philipa Rothfield dwelled on the conceptual inner workings and makings of Matthew Day’s new work, ASSEMBLAGE #1. In a non-representational way, Mathew Day used 12 islands of practice/thinking/doing as a poetic way of entering the intimate forces at play behind this creative process. An improvisation of cuts and breaks, we moved through different media, opening the back doors and exposing the inner workings and outer regions of Matthew Day’s experimental choreographic practice. Small in scale and intimate in gesture, this lecture conversation took the shape of a circle, and inhabited the space of the rehearsal studio amidst the trace elements and virtual forces of ASSEMBLAGE #1.

OPEN WORKSHOPS NOVEMVER 9 & 16 As part of his Housemate 2016 residency, Matthew Day opened his studio practice through a series of movement research workshops. The series experimented with how everyday movements, such as walking, sitting, and standing may be de-formed and re-configured through dancing - attending to choreographic problems and scores.

ARTIST AT WORK: OPENING ASSEMBLAGE NOVEMBER 16, 17 & 19 As part of the Housemate residency, Matthew Day invited several provocateurs to support him in interrogating, challenging, needling and critiquing his research process. Some of these sessions were open to the public who were invited into the intimate space of the studio to witness the making of a work as it unfolds corporeally and intellectually.

TEMPORARY READING ROOM NOVEMBER 26-27 Dancehouse asked Mathew Day to share with attendees the authors and texts that inspired ASSEMBLAGE #1. This space was a temporary Reading Room set up to discover the artist’s practice through the thinking that nurtured their creative process.

The workshop program unfolded along lines of instinct. With no pre-determined map, participants moved, attended to eachothers’ movement and through these encounters, constructed a series of attention techniques and material procedures. Here, composition is conceived as a play of external and internal forces. The proposal was that improvisation is always composition, and to seek to blur the edges and surfaces of dance and choreography into each other, inhabiting the intersections and margins.

Wednesday, 16 November With David Pledger (Independent Artist) Thursday, 17 November With Philipa Rothfield (Dancehouse, Creative Advisor) Saturday, 19 November With Hannah Matthews (Monash University Museum of Art, Senior Curator) Q&A POST SHOW CONVERSATION NOVEMBER 25 Jana Perkovic in conversation with Matthew Day, Martin Del Amo and Tim Darbyshire directly after the performance.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Image credits: Courtesy of Dancehouse.

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_IN RESIDENCE YANIRA CASTRO (USA) NOVEMBER 6-21 ABOUT _IN RESIDENCE is an invitation to join an artist in the exploration or making of a new work. It is an invitation to explore matter together. It is like being invited in someone’s kitchen, ingredients already chosen, but the dish is yet to be tried and tested and everyone in the room is invited to have a go at making and tasting it. _IN RESIDENCE is an unconventional site for the unwrapping and sharing of processes by working with practice, drawing, writing, conversation, scores, maps, films, materials and other active materials. Sometimes there will be rules, sometimes none at all. Sometimes there will be results, often times, none visible. Often it will be about learning a little, and always about going farther.

The participants of the 2016 _IN RESIDENCE program with Yanira Castro: - GÜLSEN ÖZER - LAUREN SIMMONDS - SANDRA PARKER - TIM DARBYSHIRE

IN CONVERSATION Yanira Castro was in conversation with Sandra Parker on Thursday Nov 17, 5-6.30pm to discuss the nature of performing, casting and how a performer does/does not represent their public(s).

CAST “In this residency-lab, we will meet, converse and create video recordings to investigate these questions vis-à-vis the experience of Australian performers. My intention is to develop a collection of voices from different performance cultures (Melbourne, NY, etc). Ultimately, these conversations and resulting videos will serve as material for the live performances of CAST - a new work that places the focus on the cast of a performance. The score will be generated in real time via an algorithm at each performance, constructed from a list of instructions, monologues, gestures, spacial arrangements, and actions culled from the conversations and video recordings. The algorithm makes “choices” in unanticipated ways. We are working towards collective authorship. We question: What is the connection and power relationship between performer/audience/choreographer? How are these relationships useful tools? How could they be disrupted? We actively reimagine these processes and relationships through our conversations to consider the complexities of the cast as a cultural and political act of representation.” - Yanira Castro 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

YANIRA CASTRO is a Puerto Rican choreographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is interdisciplinary encompassing movement, text, video, the creation of environments, and computer programming. She often builds indeterminate choreographic systems to structure dances in the moment. In 2009, she formed the collaborative group, a canary torsi, to create site-adaptable, performance-based projects engaged in the fundamental question: how are we together in performance? a canary torsi explores the relationship between audience and event, developing scenarios where the audience’s presence dramatically impacts the work. Castro has received numerous commissions and residencies to develop work. She received a 2009 BESSIE award for Dark Horse/Black Forest presented by Performance Space 122 in the lobby restroom of The Gershwin Hotel. The archive for a participatory performance project, The People to Come, was featured in The New Museum’s exhibit, Performance Archiving Performance, in 2013. She is a participant of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life program (2015-2016), Gibney Dance Center’s Dance-in-Process program (2016-17), a Returning Choreographic Fellow at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (2014-2013), and a 2012 Vermont Performance Lab Artist. Other fellowships and residencies include: Dance New Amsterdam (2013, NYC), Artist Ne(s)t (2007, Romania), Sugar Salon (2007, NYC), and Rockefeller Foundation (2006, Bellagio, Italy). She has been recognized with various awards for her work, including from The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, The Jerome Foundation, MAP Fund, NYFA’s Choreography Fellowship and BUILD, New Music USA, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and USArtists International. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College. www.dancehouse.com.au | www.dancehousediary.com.au

DANCEHOUSE INTERNATIONAL THREE AUSTRALIANS IN XAVIER LE ROY’S “TEMPORARY TITLE”, PARIS 15-18 September XAVIER LE ROY’s Temporary Title, 2015 was initially commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects in collaboration with Carriageworks and premiered in Sydney in November 2015. Temporary Title, 2015 was then presented at Centre Pompidou in September 2016 and three of the initial cast members - Becky Hilton, Amaara Raheem and Alice Heyward - were supported by Dancehouse to join the French cast for the Paris premiere in early 2017 as part of our Dancehouse International initiative.

BASSANO CHOREOGRAPHIC WEEK As part of Dancehouse’s partnership with B.Motion/Bassano del Grappa, Alice Heyward was invited to attend this year’s Choreographic Research Week led by Peggy Olislaegers and Merel Heering. MARIA HASSABI - STAGED - THE KEIR FOUNDATION WITH DANCEHOUSE The Keir Foundation in partnership with Dancehouse are co-commissioners of Maria Hassabi’s STAGED, which premiered at The KITCHEN in New York in October 2016. This is part of a longer collaboration project which will see Maria Hassabi develop material for the museal version of this piece in November 2017 at Dancehouse.

Dancehouse is committed to supporting the development of Australian artists by enabling overseas work opportunities with selected international choreographers and companies as a way of building international experience and contributing to sustainable career paths. This initiative was made possible with the most generous support of anonymous donors to our Dancehouse International Fund to whom we express our deepest gratitude. ON TEMPORARY TITLE Temporary Title, 2015 experiments with the process of pattern recognition, exploring forms which are not quite distinguishable as human - yet not completely anything else - and the idea of movement as a continuous process of transformation. The performers transition between strange and familiar forms and formations, challenging our perceptions of the human body and its capacity for physical expression and representation. The piece does not utilise props or costumes and the peformers are naked throughout the exhibition. This neutrality allows the transitory movements and conversations to remain the core of the visitor’s experience.

This initiative was made possible with the most generous support of anonymous donors to our Dancehouse International Fund to whom we express our deepest gratitude. Many thanks to LE KWATT for all the administrative support and to Xavier Le Roy for offering this invaluable opportunity. Image credit: Xan Wimberley/Kaldor public art projects

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Image credit: Maria Hassabi STAGED

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ARTIST DEVELOPMENT This program reflects Dancehouse’s commitment to provide independent Australian dance artists a rare opportunity for training and skills development outside of their own creative practices. Dancehouse provides these vital opportunities for continued physical examinations across a variety of dance forms, techniques and practices. The scope of training opportunies provided by Dancehouse is unique in Australia and places it on par with renowned international institutions such as Movement Research, New York, Tanz Quartier, Vienna and The Place, London. In many instances Dancehouse is the only Australian organisation offering dance practitioners access to new and unusual developments in dance practice and training. LEARNING CURVE Learning Curve is a Dancehouse mentoring program open to participants from across Australia. It matches dancers with established artists in a concentrated and intimate studio experience. Learning Curve recognises the relationship between experience and development and encourages graduates to consider the essential nature of a career in dance as a life-long learning process.

SUMMER TRAINING INTENSIVE: 10 DAYS, 10 TEACHERS 22 February - 4 March, 2016 A 10 day series of morning classes led by experienced pedagogues and practitioners whom we have invited to teach some of the tools that they we taught and that they still teach today. They shared with participants: One important thing they were taught and still using today in their practice One important thing they developed in their practice that they teach One fun exercise that they love to do to warm up and get the energy going. Teachers included in the series were: Jo Lloyd, Hellen Sky, Paea Leach, Becky Hilton, Gideon Obarzanek, Tim Darbyshire, Victoria Chiu, Yumi Unimare, Gülsen Özer, Gregory Lorenzutti.

MYRIAM GOURFINK conducted Learning Curve in 2016. For the past two decades, Gourfink’s choreograhic compositional process has intwined principles of breathing and meditative yoga practice. Her dance is guided by the flowing elasticiy of breathing movements, allowing the performer time to genuinely feel these movements. This hightened awareness of breath - cellular breathing - allows the subtle transfer of weight, inch by inch, maintaining balance without tension. For Learning Curve, Gourfink proposed an immersive environment in which she shared her cerebral and corporeal practice based on energy yoga techniques – Tibetan Buddhist tantric practices (Tilopa-Naropa-Marpa) – and invited participants to explore the compositional frameworks that be generated through them. The 2016 successful participants were: Alice Cummins, Hellen Sky, Kim Sargent-Wishart, Lz Dunn, Emily Shoesmith, Chloe Arnott, Rachel Gilbert, Momoko Nanri, Jacqueline Aylward, Hillary Goldsmith, Piaera Lauritz, Luke Fryer CURATED WORKSHOPS/MASTERCLASSES

Image Credit: Myriam Gourfink

Dancehouse is committed to providing key opportunities for local and interstate dance makers to up their skills and to enrich their practice and vision or current practices by exposing them to a selected choice of practitioners. The curated workshops program includes several 1-week or 1-weekend workshops with local, interstate or international practitioners. In 2016 Dancehouse presented workshops to a total of 178 participants.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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ARTIST DEVELOPMENT - ROOM TO MOVE ROOM TO MOVE FIRST FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH FROM MAY TO DECEMBER 6 May 2016 - 3 December 2016

SHIAN LAW - SOCIAL STUDIES: EPIC THEATRE Facilitated by Philipa Rothfield August 12

ROOM TO MOVE is a new non-curated program, offering choreographers the opportunity to present workin-progress in front of a live audience. ROOM TO MOVE is equally a tool for the artist to critically examine their work in dialogue with a facilitator-provocateur, as much as it is for audiences to gain a perspective on those elements of reflection and experimentation which enter into the making of a future dance work. Each presentation is complemented by a discussion with the artist and the audience, moderated by one of Dancehouse’s creative advisors.

Social Studies: Epic Theatre takes on the historical theatre style and analyses its relationship to the politics of our time. The investigation will ultimately seek to bend the confines of theatrical practice to voice current political concerns with the operation of democracy, and thus calling upon a re-invention of the form. The objective of the performance is to produce a queer space and expand the threshold between these binaries by blurring virtuosity and pedestrianism, performance and the theatrics of everyday, trained and untrained performers etc.

PRUE LANG - STELLAR PROJECT Facilitated by Jana Perkovic May 6

ELENA OSALDE - 360 DEGREES OUT OF STILLNESS Facilitated by Philipa Rothfield September 2

Our perceptual engagement with the world stems from the body’s capacity to see, hear, touch, smell and taste. What if we could expand the choreographic field to this level of perception? The STELLAR PROJECT is a new dance performance for five performers. The firststage creative development commenced in March 2016 and has been successfully funded by the Australia Council, Creative Victoria, Besen foundation and a Lucy Guerin Inc residency.

360 degrees out of stillness is the opportunity to observe ourselves from every angle, even inside out. The dancers will perform to a circular audience where their eyes will be equidistant to the centre of the stage. This project explores the feeling of knowing who we are, drawing on the concept of the ultimate state of peace found in stillness. According to some spiritual traditions, the souls go on a journey from happy perfection to drained degeneration.

CHLOE CHIGNELL - SOFT REALITY Facilitated by Alison Croggon June 3

LEAH LANDAU - THE SEQUEL 2 Facilitated by Angela Conquet October 7 How can degrees of idleness from the dancers and the audience repurpose attention-as-material? How can we escape the implications of ‘newness’ and what is produced otherwise?

SOFT REALITY is a performance landscape of vague images and porous bodies. It looks toward multiplicity and simulation as modes of producing relationships – proposing futures for collectivity, intimacy and togetherness. Construction and habitation are two actions that lead the performance - building environments, identities and things as a network of weak gestures, connections and formations. SECOND ECHO ENSEMBLE - CONTESTED LAND Facilitated by Becky Hilton July 1 CONTESTED LAND is a work that is conceived and directed by Ensemble member Charlie Smith. Charlie is working with ideas that are both quietly political and socially evocative. His research and studio work investigates the history of nations, conflicts both embodied and landscaped, and lines drawn in the sand. 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

SARAH ELSWORTH - UPSTREAM (B-SIDES) Facilitated by Alison Croggon December 2 UPSTREAM (B-Sides) will be an opportunity to examine both the successful gems as well as the awkward material that did not see it through to the final version of Upstream, Sarah Elsworth’s first evening length work, to premier at the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival. UPSTREAM rejoices in cycles of progression and regression through the divergent pathways of life, as a starting point for devising. The rehearsal process was a weekly collaborative practice combining Sarah’s interest’s in dance and theatre, integrating these disciplines through improvisational methodologies as a portal for the discovery of ideas.

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ARTIST DEVELOPMENT & CAPACITY BUILDING NEXT STAGES Capacity Building Workshops 21 July - 11 August Next Stages is a series of practical, capacity-building workshops for independent dance artists and emerging artists from other art forms, led by industry experts. Each week an industry professional is paired with a dance artist, to present insightful and hands on sessions that will sharpen their skills, arm them with practical tools, give them valuable insight into the arts industry and support them in building sustainable careers. How to Organise Your First Season - July 21 with Kristy Ayre and James Batchelor Everything you need to know when you plan your first show as an independent artists. Budgeting accurately and realistically, choosing the right time for the season, securing a venue, preparing the admin, technical, ticketing, media and marketing aspects of the season, and surviving it all! Writing/Marketing - How to Write & Speak About Your Work - July 28 with Becky Hilton and Veronica Bolzon Writing about your work is not the same thing as writing to market your work or having others write about your work. Get the nuances right and learn to become your best advocate! Budgets - Understanding Figures and Planning Realistically - August 4 with Josh Wright and Natalie Cursio Whether it is a provisional budget for a funding application, a show, or a tour, this workshop will have you covered with everything you need to know about budgets and more! Template making and formatting tips, plus all questions you need to ask yourself when preparing a budget, including artist fees, production locations, insurances, contingencies and more. Pitching & Networking - August 11 with Annette Vieusseux and Angela Conquet Pitching and networking are the toughest parts in the life of an artists who dream big. Learn how to pitch your work in a variety of contexts (Australian and overseas) and some useful tips on how to stir the curiosity of presenters/programmers without crossing the lines that ruin opportunities.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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SPACE GRANTS SUMMER SPACE GRANTS Through the Summer Space Grants program, Dancehouse supports artists whose emergent ideas and developing work have the potential to contribute strongly to the development of contemporary dance. Dancehouse offers fully-subsidised studio space in the form of four 30-hour Summer Space Grants. These grants are available nationally and participants are selected by Dancehouse and assisted by industry peers.

Nebahat Erpolat used the grant to begin a new research project on the feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrakhzad. She is interested in exploring Forough Farrakhzad’s controversial poem Conquest of the Garden written in 1955, which was controversial at the time because of its transgressive female voice and its criticism of the position of women in Iranian society during that time. Using movement, text, sound and objects she experimented with the central ideas and concepts from Conquest of the Garden and attempted to subscribe these onto the moving body, space, as well as use the time to explore the perceived connections between feminism, poetry and dance. Jacqueline Aylward, Belle Frahn-Starkie, Jonnie Havakis, Thomas Woodman & Ruben Stoney (collective) used the Summer Space Grant for the purposes of dancing and being dancers - to develop a shared practice and movement vocabulary. They explored the site of overlap between their independent visions and attempts to push at the edges of this to operate generatively and generously. As dancers/makers they experimented with ways to gather momentum and generate force together - asking the questions: Who are we? How do we dance? Why do we dance? What do we want to produce? What do we actually produce? Gülsen Özer used the grant work on the second development of a new dance work - In Real Life. The material Özer investigated included research and practices centered around ideas of ritual, initiation and relational agreements/pacts/promises. Özer worked to recast her team of collaborating dancers and on developing and refining material for ‘in progress’ showings to be held during 2017 with the aim to seek presenting partners for public presentation in 2017/18. Caitlin Dear used the Summer Space Grant to complete the first development of Translations (working title), a new choreographic work investigating the effect human perception has on our direct communication. Dear interrogated methods of audience immersion and participation, seeking to incite consciousness towards others’ responses and understandings. This allowed for reflection upon semantic multiplicity based on perspective.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Image credit: In Real Life, Gülsen Özer

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YOU + DANCEHOUSE - YOUR WAY OPEN SEASONS MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL Dancehouse welcomes independent dance artists to present their Melbourne Fringe shows in a nurturing, professional environment. AWKWARD CON-NECTIONS Double Bill: It’s Getting Awkward, How to Con-nect September 22 - 24

BRAINCHILD Double Bill: Low Expectations, Principle of Causation September 29 - October 1

IT’S GETTING AWKWARD captures those social encounters that we all love to hate. Those moments when you meet someone for the first time and don’t know which greeting is considered socially appropriate. How do you greet someone new without getting involved in a classic match of rock-paper-scissors with handshakes and hugs? The work magnifies the decision making process upon these encounters and presents them as an experience that is universal yet recognisably uncomfortable.

LOW EXPECTATIONS A dance governed by stories; itty bitty anecdotes crammed with an excessive amount of alliteration. Choreography: Samantha Crameri-Miller Sound: Shai Martin

Choreographed and performed by Sarah Chaffey, Scott Elstermann and Ezgi Gungor PRINCIPLE OF CAUSATION HOW TO CON-NECT is based on a quote by Brene Brown, “In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen - really seen.” The work delves into a more personal domain of how we perceive ourselves and what we choose to expose or conceal when forming connections with the people around us. Choreography: Rikki Bremner Performers: Rikki Bremner, Scott Elstermann, Essie Horn and Linton Aberle

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

How do our choices affect others? A contemporary investigation of how our choices effect our relationships with other people. Choreography: Cameron Lansdown-Goodman and dancers Sound: Dance Yates Performers: Dominik Mall, May Greenberg, Robert Tinning

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YOU + DANCEHOUSE - YOUR WAY OPEN SEASONS MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL IRINA KUZMINSKY Dancing with Dark Goddesses September 29 - October 1 Inspired by the psychological dance of Anna Pavlova and the free flowing movement of Isadora Duncan Irinushka, Irina Kuzminsky has created a dance and poetry fusion show. Irinushka’s poetry is at the heart of all of her work and Dancing with Dark Goddesses was created by her to accompany the launch of her first poetry collection at the William Blake Heaven’s Gate Festival. The show creates a web of voice, music and dance, to take us into an intimate encounter with faces of the feminine. Impressionistic, but with semi-narrative threads, Dancing with Dark Goddesses speaks of the passion, the rage, the joy and the strength of the feminine. Each of the sections – Ananda, Apocalypsia and Dancing with Dark Goddesses – embodies a different “rasa”, colour or feeling, setting the poems in the music and movement of many colours. Choreography and Performance: Irina Kuzminsky PAUL JESSEPH BASE HICKMAN ISM September 21 - 24 The act, practice, or process of doing something and the behaviour of a specified kind of person or thing. It is defined as belief, attitude or style and is referred to by a word. ISM’s concept and inspiration is from the ‘Mona-ism’ gallery exhibition in Hobart Tasmania. This piece was originally performed as a solo work in Singapore and Philippines last year for the Asia International Dance Festival. Choreography: Paul Jesseph Base Hickman Performers: Paul Jesseph Base Hickman and Kathleen Lott

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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YOU + DANCEHOUSE - YOUR WAY OPEN SEASONS COMMUNITY EVENTS Dancehouse is a multi-purpose Victorian heritage building and we welcome a variety of individuals and groups to use our spaces for a wide range of events. Whether it is a performance, a conference/seminar, a community event or a corporate function, Dancehouse’s spaces and crews are here to support the wider dance community.

PERFORMANCE SEASONS AN ODYSSEY OF ODISSI DANCE - MONICA SINGH & ODISSI, April 9 Two Part Performance: Monica Singh presents the soul of Odissi in solo compositions by the maestros of Odissi dance at Dancehouse. A rare event up only for one evening. AN EVENING WITH THE BLUEBELLES - SWING PATROL, August 6 The Bluebelles are Swing Patrol’s all-female 1920s Charleston performance troupe. The ladies performed a selection of Charleston and swing routines for family and friends. THRILL THE WORLD, October 29 Thrill The World, Australia Melbourne, ran their annual Michael Jackson Fan Event suitable for all ages, in proud support of Beyondblue. CONNECTION - LA VÉRITÉ, November 12 Connection explored the concept of connection and disconnection to ourselves and relationally.

Image: Swing Patrol

TO BE HEARD - INDIGO DANCE, December 9 An end of year student dance performance story on homelessness - raising awareness and money for a chosen charity. PRACTICE SHARING WITNESS - SHAUN MCLEOD, August 13 - 27 Concept and Direction: Shaun McLeod Dancers: Shaun McLeod, Olivia Millard, Peter Fraser and Jason Marchant Witness was a performance for a group of dancers and a participating audience. The dancers had been practising the Dance Movement Therapy method known as Authentic Movement, which involves a specific relationship and commitment between a mover and a witness. An intimate exchange occurred between mover and witness, with affective and ethical implications —aspects of which were articulated in a discussion that follows the moving. The witnesses had to commit to their involvement by agreeing to attend all three nights (which together constitute a single performance event). This commitment to attending three nights echoed the witness’s com mitment to the mover in Authentic Movement.

Image: Monica Singh

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Witness prompted a range of questions: about what constitutes performance, about what the roles of the dancer and audience might entail, and about how a community of common interest and experience might develop through a responsive, attentive exchange between its participants. www.dancehouse.com.au | www.dancehousediary.com.au

YOU + DANCEHOUSE DANCEHOUSE DIARY

ROTARY YOUTH ARTS PROJECT In partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Photography & the Rotary Clubs of Richmond and Collingwood

Dancehouse Diary is a free publication, a site for developing critical discourse on dance and connecting dance to other art forms, to societal issues and to a wider audience. Each Dancehouse Diary features independent dance news and professional callouts, as well as upcoming events at Dancehouse which include workshops and classes, performances and discussions. In 2014 we launched the Dancehouse diary website where previous issues of the diary are archived along with recommended reading and links to artists and topics.

June - September 2016

The Money Issue Issue 9

The SnapHop Rotary Youth Arts Project (RYAP) is a collaborative project between public, private, education and arts organisations. Its mission is to assist socio-economically and culturally disadvantaged young people to gain life skills such as teamwork, creativity and the confidence to help develop a sense of purpose, connection to local community and a need for a future pathway. The project offers free, empowering, hands-on quality arts experiences in dance, video and photography workshops, aiming towards a quality exhibition, screening and performance.

This issue of the Dancehouse Diary investigates money in the arts. In a money-driven world, the performing arts are equally subjected to market rules – specifically those of commodification and consumerism – like any other field of practice. And yet, with no tangible object to trade except the experiential moment of the now, should the embodied performative event be a commodity traded like any other?

The program offers free, empowering, hands-on arts experiences for young people, teaching life skills such as teamwork, creativity and confidence. This year, Dancehouse invited 2015 Housemate/Artist in Residence Sarah Aiken to lead the dance. Sarah Aiken mentored 22 young people from Collingwood College towards a multimedia performance presented for family and friends. The 2016 RYAP culminated in a public presentation at Fitzroy Town Hall on the 6th of September. The photography workshops were led by Lauren Dunn.

SARAH AIKEN is a Melbourne based performer, choreographer and teacher originally from Bellingen, NSW. Moving from the mundane to the spectacular, from the sublime to the ridiculous, Sarah’s work distorts and manipulates bodies and objects to playfully reimagine perspective, scale and perception. Most recently, Sarah was Dancehouse’s Housemate/Artist in residence and a 2016 Keir Choreographic Award finalist.

Editorial: Angela Conquet Feature Article: David Pledger What Artists Think: Alison Croggon, Jan Ritsema, Celia Hepburn What Theorists Think: Bojana Kunst In Dialogue: Angela Conquet, Joeri Mol, Mathieu Briand, Matthew Day and Xavier Le Roy Food for Thought: Anitra Nelson From the Wordwide World: Andy Horwitz, Lim How Ngean, Arushi Singh Rocking the Boat: Joeri Mol, Cassie Thornton & Max Haiven ONLINE VIEWS 2016: 4316 VISITORS 2016: 1033 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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YOU + DANCEHOUSE - ONLINE CONTENT AUDIO

AUDIO STAGE CHRYSA PARKINSON (April 24) DEBORAH JOWITT (June 5) BOJANA CVEJIC (August 29) SARAH-JANE NORMAN (October 30) MATTHEW DAY (November 23)

In a money-driven world, performing arts are subject to market rules, like any other field of production. Together with funding – be public or private – performing arts receive a mandate to produce something of value. But what is value, in the context of art? Is it the price we can get on the finished product? Or is there an intrinsic value in art, for its own sake?

VIDEO

THE BODY. NOW. CONVERSATION SERIES in partnership with the Victorian College of the Arts THE COMING OF THE BODY (April 27) EXHIBITING CHOREOGRAPHY (April 28) THE MONEY ISSUE (April 29) CHOREOGRAPHING EXHIBITIONS (April 30) IN-HOUSE ARTIST INTERVIEWS Matthew Day Sarah-Jane Norman & Nacera Belaza

We feel the pressure to produce commodities – things to exchange for money. But with no tangible object to trade, except the experiential moment of the now, can the embodied performative event be a commodity, to be traded like any other? And how do we understand work, in this context? What monetary value can be placed on performance, and what work produces that value? How does money – whether public, corporate, or philanthropic – affect, prescribe, and determine the content of a performance, the forms of thinking if embodies, its modes of production, the artist’s status in society, the economies of work, and the value of value itself? Artists have been resisting and challenging market forces since the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, we see some artists re-defining and re-framing themselves as entrepreneurs and marketeers, while others are shaping alternative modes of experiencing an embodied event by resisting the mechanisms of capitalism. Where can performance sit, on the sliding scale between compliance and resistance?

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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YOU + DANCEHOUSE - PUBLIC CLASSES Weekly independent dance classes are held throughout the day, evening and during weekends. This opens up Dancehouse to a wide range of profiles from enthusiasts to professionals, run by entrepreneurial teachers with the support of Dancehouse. In 2016, classes included:

Image: Action Theater - Danielle Cresp

DONNA SPARX HOOP SPARX

LAURA & NICOLAS DANNA JET SPORTS

DANIELLE CRESP ACTION THEATRE

NADIA NIAZ DANCE WORKSHOP

ANNE Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;KEEFFE ALCHEMY DANCE

SUZY MARKOVSKI Actors Workshop

PUSHPA VELYAVETTI BOLLYWOOD DANCE

NITHYA IYER ODISSI/SUJATA MOHAPTRA

IRINA DE LOCHE CONTEMPORARY DANCE

ARIDHI ANDERSON DAYDREAM THEATRE

IRINA DE LOCHE AFRO GROOVE

PRIYA SRINIVASAN RELAXATION AND MOVING WITH OTHERS (free)

KATRINA RANK FINE LINES

KATH CREAGH IDENTITY & THE FOUR ELEMENTS

RENEE KALISSA AFRICAN DANCE

NATALIE ABBOTT HAPPY YOGA

MEGHALA BHAT BHARATANATYAM - INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCE

DUN DUN KAN DJEMBE & DUN DUN

MONICA SINGH ODISSI INDIAN DANCE

LOUISE SIVERSEN WORKSHOP FOR PERFORMERS

RAMONA YAGNIK KALARI

LILLY SUN TAI CHI WORKSHOP

ANDREA AVINA AVINA DANCE

VANGELIS LEGAKIS DANCE AND BEING ART

ALICE CUMMINS BODY-MIND CENTERING

AKIRA HONDA ZUMBA WORKSHOP

SUSAN BAMFORD-CALEO VOICE & BODY AWARENESS JEN MCINTYRE DANCE FITNESS AKIRA HONDA AERODANCE MASALA & KPOP FITNESS 2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT MARKETING REPORT

SOCIAL MEDIA / WEB

MEMBERSHIP PHILOSOPHY The Dancehouse members are a vital part of the organisation’s vibrancy. They are dance makers and dance lovers alike and they are the first users of our services. We aim at developing a privileged relationship with all of them and to increase their numbers as they represent the best advocates for dance in general and for our programs in particular. We strive to cultivate understanding and appreciation of this art form and for those who join our membership programs, each time aiming to create a unique encounter with the artists and their work.

Dancehouse grew our social media audience significantly in 2016. Facebook was increased by 544 followers/ likes, Instagram by 665 and Twitter by 172. Our average daily engaged users on facebook was 55.32 people with a average daily total reach of 1088.61 for our posts. Audio Stage was downloaded 4774 times and our Facebook video content was viewed 10, 862 times.

In 2016 Dancehouse signed up 87 new members and 85 renewed members (total of 172 active Dancehouse members). PRINT PROGRAM Dancehouse printed a programme brochure in the style instigated by our 2015 program - announcing all major projects and activities for 2016 as well as our membership program and other ways to engage with Dancehouse. The program brochure has stemmed from many conversations with the community (dance and general public) and out of a need to grow Dancehouse’s identity and visibility. It also allowed promotion of the programs more in advance and offered new ways of engaging with our stakeholders. The program brochure was designed by Dancehouse’s graphic designer, Kaitlin Hopkins. FLYERS & E-NEWS / EDM All performance and event programs were created in-house, as well as postcard flyers, various A3 posters and promotional materials.

10, 862

2933 (544 new) Facebook Likes

1954 (172 new) Twitter followers

Facebook video views

1016 (665 new) Instagram followers

4316

4774

Audio Stage podcast downloads

Dancehouse Diary website hits

37 newsletters/announcements, 14 special invitations, 13 special offers and 7 media releases were designed and sent to a comprehensive database of contacts which currently contains approximately 4000 subscribers. In 2016, our website was visited by: 53,650 unique visitors First visit: 01 Jan 2016, 00:05 Last visit: 31 Dec 2016, 23:59 Top referrer: Facebook with 8713 hits (63% of all web referalls)

Viewed traffic Not viewed traffic

Unique visitors Number of visits Pages

Hits

53,650

302,947

1,016,621

2,009,886

2,167,378

79,199

* Not viewed traffic includes traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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DANCEHOUSE IN THE MEDIA - SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS Vimeos, bios, headshots, company history. I can get hooked on this information glut and the speed with which I can, say, virtually enter a museum to check a painting that inspired an image in a dance I’m trying to write about. No editor helps me, only knowledgeable friends who email (sometimes within five minutes) to point out post-publication glitches that I can correct. A writer in total (sometimes terrifying) control. Oh, and, by the way, for this, I am paid … nothing. Jones: There used to be a small number of well-known gatekeepers. Is there something interesting and useful about today’s proliferation of voices? Jowitt: Dance being somewhat the stepchild of the arts, I feel that it’s profitable — if sometimes alarming — that people are weighing in online about what they like and dislike. I love the fact that a real dialogue can sometimes get going about a particular work. Jones: You call dance “the stepchild of the arts”. Why? Jowitt: Because more people go to galleries and museums and attend performances of opera and classical music than go to dance. At least, that’s my impression, and it used to be substantiated by surveys. In terms of funding, dance has been low man on the totem pole, except for the major ballet companies. Independent choreographers spend a lot of time hustling for money in the US. Jones: By the way, do you call today’s dance modern or contemporary? Jowitt: You know what? I hate terms. That is, I hate spending time trying to figure out how to categorise a dance. And I try to avoid doing it. Nowadays “modern dance” tends to relegate a work to classics of the past. “Contemporary” seems more neutral. Then there’s “postmodern”. Once I called certain kinds of work “balletomodern” (usually with a pejorative edge). Quite a few choreographers who have had nothing to do with ballet contribute works to ballet companies. I think of Paul Taylor’s Black Tuesday being performed by American Ballet Theatre. Jones: You have written of choreographers’ “willingness — indeed, their frequent mission — to challenge the expectations and sensibilities of the public or to present unsettling images of contemporary life”. Then shortly after you write about “hybrids” and that some ballet-makers have a more contemporary outlook than some certifiably modern dance choreographers. Jowitt: Hmmm. Those “hybrids” may be the “balletomodern” works I mentioned. (I put Glen Tetley in that category once.) I have thought of some of Balanchine’s ballets being bracingly contemporary, in line with the music he used. My Tetley example (not entirely fair to him) as “balletomodern” aligns him with works that use modern dance’s penchant for invention to make ballet look sexier and more down-to-earth, while employing the virtuosity and theatricality that would make a work fit a ballet company’s profile. Jones: You have called ballet “a powerful monolithic entity”. Have you changed your mind given the increased communication between ballet and contemporary dance? Jowitt: Ballet companies have definitely become more experimental in developing a repertory. And there aren’t that many excellent choreographers using the classical vocabulary beautifully. But I may have been referring to the fact that many ballet companies are big, corporate establishments or, in Europe and elsewhere, embedded in national theatres. They have budgets and executives and powerful boards and (in America for sure) big donors. Often, depending on the establishment, the company has to worry about what will sell, whom it might offend or shock in a not-good way. Jones: An associated question, in my mind at least, relates to Alexei Ratmansky’s work on getting as close to Petipa’s style as possible in The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Jowitt: I love Ratmansky taking that step. Those two ballets in particular have accrued so many changes, deletions and additions over the centuries with those in charge shifting the music around, catering to the demands of principal dancers, and going in for trendy updates with bizarre costumes and sets. Jones: I love that in the contemporary world there are many women choreographers but in ballet the lack has become quite a topic of conversation.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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DANCEHOUSE IN THE MEDIA - SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

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DANCEHOUSE IN THE MEDIA - SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS

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Keir Choreographic Award leaps into discussion about the future of dance Philippa Hawker

Curator and critic Bal-Blanc, who says that he is more interested in the sharing of knowledge than the awarding of a prize, was struck – in the first stage of the selection process, via protracted discussions over Skype - "how my colleagues from other locations on the planet identified our work differently" - and he is looking forward to continue the discussions in Melbourne and Sydney. Alongside Bal-Blanc and Keir, the jurors are Bojana Cvevic, a performance theorist and performance maker based in Brussels; and choreographer and dancer Sarah Michelson, English-born but now based in Brooklyn whose most recent work has explored dance in a museum context. Wendy Martin, artistic director of the Perth International Arts Festival, was on the panel that selected the finalists, but has not been able to be involved in the next stage. Her place is being taken by Eke.

Published: April 18 2016 - 12:22PM The Keir Choreographic Award is an arts competition with a difference. For one thing, its judges have taken a robust attitude towards the competitive element of the event. "Awards are a little bit like executions in the 18th century. They bring in an audience," declared Marten Spangberg when he was one of the international members of the inaugural judging panel. And for one of this year's judges, Pierre Bal Blanc, "Giving a reward is the same as giving a punishment – they are part of the same system," he says. What interests them about the Keir is what lies beyond the substantial prize – $30,000 for the winner. The Keir Choreographic Award was established in 2014 to support innovative, experimental and crossdisciplinary practice in contemporary dance. Eight finalists are commissioned and financially supported and given resources to develop works for presentation in front of audiences in Melbourne and Sydney. In both cities there is a public program that draws on the expertise and ideas of visiting judges and other guests – a program that reflects the award's commitment to exploration and innovation as much as to adjudication. The Keir is designed to alternate with Dance Massive, a biennial contemporary dance event in Melbourne that showcases new work from all parts of Australia. One of the aims in establishing it, says its founder, Phillip Keir, "is to continue the discussion of what choreography is, in an international sense". The competition itself asks the question, "What is choreography and what is its future?" and so do the events around the award. He does not see the Keir as an emerging artist's award. In the first year, there were two international judges; this year there are three. Keir is the only person to have been on both juries. The inaugural winner, Atlanta Eke, is serving as a judge for the final round. Eke is looking forward to this role, and expecting to encounter the openness and sense of possibility that she found as an entrant two years ago, beginning with the application requirements. "The process was a liberation from the categorical, criteria-driven application process, whether it's for funding or a residency, or to be presented in a festival." Not having to adhere "to that bureaucratised way of thinking", he says, was a welcome change. Keir entrants, who must be professional artists with established practices, submit a proposal via a five-minute video outlining their choreographic idea. The judges select eight finalists, who are then commissioned to develop their idea into a 20-minute work. For Eke, the process was in many ways as significant as the prize. The level of financial support and the resources made available to her as a finalist meant that she could work in a collaborative, cross-disciplinary way, that she had not been able to before. The time from commission to performance is quite short, and this concentrated focus also meant she worked in a slightly different way. Eke anticipates that being on the other side will offer a similar kind of openness. "I felt positive about what I heard of the way the jury operated last time," she says. Not making decisions with a checklist of criteria, but treating the process as "more of a conversation, thinking about what a jury could be, and how it could be beneficial to the future of the award. And I was interested in engaging with that. Seeing it as an extension of my practice, and entering into it as someone who's interested in critical thinking and transformation."

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

Of the eight choreographers selected for 2016; two of them, Sarah Aiken and James Batchelor, were also there in 2014. Their works will be presented in the semi-finals, which take place over four days at Melbourne's Dancehouse beginning on April 26. After these performances, four finalists will be announced, and their pieces will be presented at Sydney's Carriageworks in May. On the last night at Carriageworks, a winner will be announced. The award includes a $30,000 prize. There is also an audience choice award, made by Sydney audience members, of $10,000 There is a public program taking place before and during the awards, in both Melbourne and Sydney. The program includes workshops, talks, performances, panel discussions and in-conversation sessions with visiting judges and other guests, including participants in the Sydney Biennale. Deborah Jowitt, an internationally renowned dance critic, is conducting a weeklong workshop at Dancehouse on writing critically about dance. "It's a way of making sense of the people being here, and using the awards as a focus," Keir says. For details on the Melbourne public program and awards performances, see www.dancehouse.com.au For details on the Sydney public program and awards performances, see www.carriageworks.com.au KEIR FINALISTS Sarah Aiken: In Sarah Aiken (Tools for Personal Expansion), Aiken's choreography transgresses the limits of her body to consider the politics and possibilities of space. James Batchelor: Inhabited Geometries reflects James Batchelor's interests in the confrontation between the body and external structures. Chloe Chignell: In Deep Shine Chloe Chignell looks to locate choreography on the surface of the body, where shine resides. Ghenoa Gela: In Fragments of Malungoka - Women of the Sea, Sydney-based Ghenoa Gela explores her female ancestry in the Western Torres Strait. Paea Leach: Paea Leach's work is driven by the poetics of the body and the physicality of language. One and one and one is a trio for two dancers and one poet. Martin Hansen: Berlin-based Martin Hansen's work if it's all in my veins questions constructions of time and history, focusing on the spectacle of the theatre. Alice Heyward: Alice Heyward locates her choreography at the nexus of language and movement. Before The Fact is a piece that has arisen 'from page to stage', taking its cues from imagined dance notation drawings. Rebecca Jensen: Explorer is an expedition with an unknown destination. Rebecca Jensen becomes a tourist within and beyond her body. This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/content/adaptive/theage/entertainment/dance/keirchoreographic-award-leaps-into-discussion-about-the-future-of-dance-20160418-go8qnb.html

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International pairings One program, however, that she does talk of with evident pride is Dance

Dancehouse

Territories, presented biennially with the Melbourne Festival. Dance Territories is a double bill which pairs an Australian artist with an international artist. It's the only Dancehouse initiative where she feels she has a genuine curatorial role, and it's the one in which she feels most invested as artistic director. "I came up with the concept when I realised how much the work of artists here resonated with the work of artists I was seeing in Europe and in the US," says Conquet. "Without realising it, they are exploring the same themes and topics but from different political or aesthetical angles." This year's edition, Borderlines, which was the third, paired French-Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza with local cross-disciplinary artist Sarah-Jane Norman. "As an artistic director, I see so many shows. I see work in all four corners of the world. And sometimes I sit there and think, for example, oh, Nacera, she

International reach Dancehouse has also been busy promoting links between the local, the national and the international dance community. One local artist who has benefited from this is Matthew Day, described by Conquet as part of a "new wave" of Australian choreographers with a minimalist, almost conceptual aesthetic.

has a completely different body of work from Sarah-Jane’s and yet they are

significantly increasing the number of international guests it presents while also providing a home for established and emerging local choreographers. Generating urgency and dialogue Artistic Director Angela Conquet, appointed in 2012 and formerly the dance director at the artist studio Mains d'Œuvres in Paris, has worked hard to provide context for these events and performances, and to create an atmosphere of urgency and anticipation. "I think it's my responsibility as Artistic Director to connect the present corporeal moment with other areas of life, with philosophy and sociology and politics," she explains. "I think it's my duty to create conversations and dialogues, to stir as much constructive debate as possible, connecting ideas with embodied gestures." An example of this work is the two-week program of events organised around French choreographer Xavier le Roy's visit to Melbourne in December 2015. His performance of Self Unfinished (1998) was accompanied by two exhibitions, several public talks and a week-long workshop with local artists. "What do you know about Xavier le Roy in Australia?" says Conquet, shrugging. "For me, it was really important to contextualise the work, and I could only do that, for example, by putting him in conversation with philosophers, urbanists, architects; people who think on a micro- and macroeconomic level about how one produces work today." The immediate future looks bright for Dancehouse. Audience numbers are up, and this year the company was one of three Melbourne-based dance organisations to receive four-year funding from the Australia Council. But despite her success, Angela Conquet isn't tooting her own horn. An artistic director ought to work in the shadows, she says, and she is suspicious of any attempt to glorify the role.

2016 DANCEHOUSE ANNUAL REPORT

exploring the same thing. Different politics, different meaning, visually a very different thing, but the driving force feels the same." [Read the RealTime review of Dance Territories, “The ambiguous cry of blood.”] In profile: Natalie Abb

Maximum Sharing this moment of recognition with Australian audiences is, she claims, Gail Priest : RT 121 : RT the great privilege of being an artistic director, and one that she takes very seriously. "We frame the connection, and then the journey is for you," she says. "We're just pointing you in the right direction." Is it surprising that the idea of connection should be so central to Conquet's philosophy? Born in Romania, she grew up in a country which at that time was still relatively isolated from the West. She migrated to Paris as a teenager and, after a brief stint as an interpreter, dived into arts management. Her first role was with the Avignon Festival, where she worked for a group called Theorem, helping to build links between artists in Eastern Europe and the West. Now in Melbourne she is doing something similar, building links and making connections. And perhaps this explains why Dancehouse is so fascinating. In a country where we're apt to fall into the trap of hoping for things elsewhere, this small company is pointing to similitudes and affinities that were always dreamed of but never noticed. Of course, Conquet insists that any work first needs to connect with an audience at a physical and emotional level. "It has to reach somebody," she says. "If the work touches someone's heart, and that feeling stays with them, then we've nailed it." A good indicator of this is if a show provokes a lot of debate or strong reactions. "At the first Dance Territories I had someone who stormed out of the room and told me I could go back home if this was the sort of work I was bringing," she says. "They’d seen something in the work that really bothered them. And I thought: good.” But audiences here are rarely so demonstrative, even if they have been moved. "In Melbourne I think that sometimes people are too well behaved," admits Conquet. "They tend to applaud immediately. I love it when it's not immediate. I love those five seconds of silence where you can feel that something has hit them. The longer the silence the more I feel I've achieved my goal."

In 2013, Day and fellow choreographer Sandra Parker presented separate works at the Faits d'Hiver Festival in Paris. In 2014, Day and Natalie Abbott presented at the Avignon Festival. And then last year, in 2015, he participated with James Batchelor in a workshop and presentation at the B.MOTION Festival in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. These European peregrinations were all facilitated—at least in part—by the Dancehouse International program, a network of partnerships and alliances with likeminded companies in Australia and Europe. The program is an expression of Conquet's belief that travel is the best way to encourage the development of emerging artists. "The whole idea behind this was to get the artists circulating," says Conquet. "It was really about exposing artists to a different context and a different territory and a different kind of audience." Conquet's biggest concern is that there aren't more opportunities for this kind of circulation at a national level, and that there isn't the infrastructure to tour dance works. "I think it's a shame to have so much effort, so much money and so much commitment from the artists and the presenters, and here they have a fivenight season and then they're gone," she says. "When I arrived here I was outraged that the artists were not outraged. There is a sort of acceptance of this." She cites the example of Natalie Abbott's Maximum, which not only toured to the OFF section of the Avignon Festival, but also to five Australian cities. "That should be the normal life of a work," says Conquet. "The more you tour a work the better it gets. You can see how it has lived in the body through all the many different performances." Natalie Abbott, Donny

Dancehouse, Melbourne

Henderson-Smith, Maximum

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back But what does Day do? He snatches up a piece of wood, drags it across the floor and uses it to prop up a large wooden panel. He adds the Berocca to

Man at work Andrew Fuhrmann: Matthew Day's Assemblage #1

one of the bottles, turning the water red. He drinks it. Then he drinks from a bottle of blue liquid. He eats a banana and throws the skin at a pair of shorts hanging from a rafter. He puts the nails in his pocket and prances across the room, tinkling. A few concrete—and even somewhat gratuitous—images emerge: Matthew Day wrapped in colourful fabrics, like a harem attendant; Matthew Day in his underwear standing on one leg, leaning on a spear, reminiscent of David Gulpilil's famous pose in Walkabout.