INTERCHANGECHOREOGRAPHIC EXCHANGE PROSPECTUS

ABOUT CRITICAL PATHCritical Path is Australia's leading centre for choreographic enquiry, research and development. Our home is The Drill, a large rehearsal space situated on the shores of Rushcutters Bay in central Sydney.

Critical Path was established in 2005 to �ll a recognised gap in the independent dance sector�providing a 'critical' pathway through which professional dance-makers could be supported to extend and innovate their choreographic practice. Ten years on, Critical Path stands proud as a unique and signi�cant contributor to the development of contemporary choreography in Australia.

The calibre and creative output of our alumni is testament to our ongoing in�uence and success.

I have been privileged in my career to experience many international exchange opportunities. These exchanges radically altered my perceptions about my work, and the power of dance to cross cultural boundaries; they have had a remarkable and enduring in�uence on me - in spatial design, in choreography, in developing non verbal clarity in communication, in creating works of relevance to a given context.

SUE HEALEY

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CRITICAL PATH EXCHANGES

One of the cornerstones of our work is facilitating national and international artist exchanges�a part of our core vision to broaden the horizons of contemporary dance and nurture new collaborations and visions for dance practice.

Over the last 10 years we have sent local artists abroad to the UK, India, Japan and Germany and have hosted over 100 artists from around the globe at our home studio in Sydney. We have proven expertise in developing and producing world-class choreographic workshops and exchanges, and encourage new partner organisations to work with us to cultivate even more

opportunities. Are you looking for a professional artist-in-residence to visit your school or university? Are you an arts organisation looking for an international partner?

Included in this booklet are pro�les highlighting 12 outstanding Australian dance-makers who are alumni of Critical Path's New South Wales residency and exchange programs. They are all artists who have developed unique approaches to creative practice and an ability to share these approaches through teaching and through making innovative dance work.

MODELS FOR EXCHANGE

There are many tangible ways to connect artists and organisations through exchange. At Critical Path, we favour the residency-workshop model. It gives artists time to work in the studio on research and development, and also share approaches to practice with local artists. The bene�t of this model is that it is �exible: residencies can involve blue-sky research projects or work towards a performance outcome; and workshops can take the shape of weekend masterclasses, choreographic workshops varying in length between a day and a week, or workshop projects of a few weeks

to months that culminate in public showings. The program can incorporate interdisciplinary collaboration, artist talks or studio showings and other performances.

All the artists featured here are engaged in regular teaching alongside their choreographic practices. An overview of the kinds of workshops each artist facilitates, along with performances they have currently available for touring, is included in each pro�le.

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My everyday life is my practice, my research. I'm trying very hard to prioritise my cultural voice, and to commit to bringing the voice of marginalised communities to the frangipani-less foreground.

LATAI TAUMOEPEAUimage: Keren Ruki

Workshops: artist lecture/demonstration; deconstructing cultural concepts for contemporary performanceWorks: Stitching (Up) the Sea (2014); Sideshow (2011)

Latai is a Punake, body-centred performance artist; her story is of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga, and her birthplace, the Eora Nation, Sydney, and everything far and in-between. Her work activates Indigenous philosophies and methodologies; cross-pollinating ancient practices of ceremony with her own contemporary performance processes to re-interpret, re-generate and extend her movement practice and its function in and from Oceania. She has presented works at Tanz im August, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Carriageworks, The Performance Space, Sydney Opera House, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, The Australian Museum, Brisbane Powerhouse, Woodford

Folk Festival, Sydney Fringe Festival to name a few. She has also toured internationally to London, Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

Working across gallery, performance and community contexts, Latai's work strongly encounters the socio-political landscape of Australia and beyond in its examinations of race, class, dispossession, colonisation and the female body politic. Recent work has focused on the e�ects of climate change on low-lying islands in the South Paci�c, presenting visceral and sometimes confronting images of the body in peril. vimeo.com/lataitaumoepeau

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We are really quite ignorant about the many natural environments that are pivotal to all life remaining in a sustainable balance. I'm interested to try and reignite a spark of interest in knowing more about realms that aren't our human everyday experiences.

DEAN WALSHimage: Natalie Ayton

DANCE + ENVIRONMENT

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Workshops: composition and structured improvisation related to the PrimeOrderly systemWorks: Under Pressure (2013); See An Enemy (2012)

Dean has worked in Australia and overseas as a performer, director/choreographer and teacher, working with companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre, Stalker Theatre, Australian Dance Theatre, Opera Australia, The opera Project, Sydney Dance Company and One Extra Dance. He has a long and deeply held personal interest in marine ecology, biology and interactive disciplines (sur�ng, snorkeling, scuba and breath-held diving), which forms the basis for his latest choreographic explorations. Since 1991 he has devised more than 35 works from solos through to small group performances.

In 2011-12, as part of his dance fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts,

Dean began devising a new movement manual/system he calls PrimeOrderly, which provides de�nitions of the physical language uncovered in his research into subaquatic experience and marine realms. Dean's marine research has been developed in dialogue with scientists, conservation communities, divers and dancers�and exchange of this type has been an essential part of his developing work. The system can be used as a tool for general practice and training, referenced during educational forums and is utlised by Dean in the construction of new interdisciplinary performance work.

LEE WILSON & MIRABELLE WOUTERS (BRANCH NEBULA)

image: Freespace Fest 2014

Our outlook as artists is fed by a ravenous appreciation of so-called low brow culture; kickboxing, wrestling, video arcades, or just doing our shopping. We embrace our eclectic interests and bring them into the theatre to surprise audiences but also to apotheosise these cultural energies.

Lee and Mirabelle are co-creators of company Branch Nebula, founded in 1998. They have developed a reputation for making innovative works that explore contemporary culture as a means of creating access and speaking to a broad audience. Collaborating with non-conventional performers, Branch Nebula works in tandem with young street-style artists to create new visions for engaging with BMX, skating, parkour, breaking and contemporary dance. Most recently, Branch Nebula presented s.l.o.a.p. (space left over after planning) in Hong Kong for the West Kowloon Cultural District's Freespace Fest 2014 and at the URB Festival 2013 in

Helsinki, in each case engaging with local artists. Concrete and Bone Sessions, a site-speci�c work for a skate park, premiered at the Sydney Festival in 2013 and toured to the Santiago a Mill Festival in 2014.

Their work represents a diverse range of enquiry into the audience experience including the award-winning Whelping Box, which immerses the audience within a large box, and Artwork, premiering in 2015, which employs real people to perform on stage in front of an audience for the �rst time.

branchnebula.com

Workshops: collaborative performance making; site-speci�city; audience engagementWorks: Artwork (2015); Concrete and Bone Sessions (2013); s.l.o.a.p. (2013); Whelping Box (2012); Sweat (2010)

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NICK POWERimage: Amy Hetherington

DANCE + URBAN SPACE

While my work pushes the boundaries of the hip hop artform, it remains strongly rooted in the culture of hip hop, using that culture as its core tool of communication.

Nick has worked professionally for the past 14 years as a b*boy, choreographer, teacher and festival director. He has facilitated community cultural development workshops, nurtured young and emerging dancers, worked in regional centres and remote Indigenous communities and produced large-scale hip hop events and festivals. He has choreographed shows for companies such as Tracks Dance and Stalker Theatre, and his work has toured throughout Europe and Australia, and to Hong Kong and Mexico. Nick is also the founding director of the Platform Hip Hop Festival, an annual celebration produced by Carriageworks in Sydney including shows, exhibitions, workshops and a national dance competition.

One of a small group of choreographers internationally fusing hip hop styles with contemporary choreographic techniques and dance theatre, recently he has been facilitating an exchange between the Tiny Toones crew from Cambodia and the D*City Rockers from Darwin in Australia's north. In 2012, Nick was awarded the Australia Council's dance residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where he began choreographic research that led to Cypher. This performance examines the circular formation that occurs at jams and battles as hip hop's most important ritual space and as a source of language, tension, rivalry and communication.

vimeo.com/nickpower

Workshops: breakdance; composition; choreographing gesture in hip hopWorks: Cypher (2014)

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ROB MCCREDIEimage: Hayley Rose Photography

I aim to treat young dancers as I would any dancers, not making assumptions about what they are willing to try. I want to craft a kind of looking between the dancers and the audience in which they are equally responsible for that moment. When someone looks directly at you it puts you in a relationship with one another.

Rob is the Youth Company Director of fLiNG Physical Theatre, a regional youth dance company located in Bega, Australia. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2006, he has worked as a performer with companies such as Legs on the Wall and many independent artists including, most recently, Jess Devereux, Rebecca Jensen and Melissa Jones. He also has a background as a design assistant in theatre, �lm and TV, and has created set installations for choreographers Fiona Bryant and Jo Lloyd. Rob has an ongoing collaboration with

Holly Durant as HORO!, creating works that integrate dance and design.

Audience experience is a through line to Rob's work. Inviting the audience to experience the work from di�erent angles, he experiments with gaze and interrupted �ows of movement to explore di�erent modes of watching. At fLiNG, Rob works with an ensemble who range in ages from 14 to 20. In working with young people, Rob notes that it is their intelligence, motivation and supportive encouragement of each other that makes exciting things happen.

robmccredie.tumblr.com

Workshops: dance technique; composition; constructing spaces for danceWorks: Who Knows What (2010)

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GHENOA GELAimage: Gregory Lorenzutti

WORKING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

I like to go back to my roots and I love teaching kids. I'm dedicated to telling my family's stories in a creative space that opens up dialogue about Torres Strait Islander culture, what dance and theatre is and who its audience can be.

Ghenoa is a proud Torres Strait Islander woman from Rockhampton, in the north of Australia, and a graduate from NAISDA, the national Indigenous dance school. She performs across such diverse �elds as contemporary dance, dance theatre, traditional dance, hip hop, theatre for young people and circus�working on projects for both television and the stage. She has performed nationally and internationally with Circus Oz, Shaun Parker Company, My Darling Patricia and Vicki van Hout, and is an artist-in-residence with Carriageworks. She is also a regular and well-known presenter on Deadly Vibe Australia's Move it Mob Style, an Indigenous hip hop dance program for kids airing on

Australia's national public broadcaster the ABC.

Ghenoa also does extensive work facilitating workshops for young people in urban, regional and remote communities with ARMTour, Young, Black and Deadly and Vibe Alive, to name just a few. She has recently begun developing her own work, inspired by her family's stories and culture. Winds of Woerr premiered at the Melbourne Next Wave Festival in 2014 and tells of the creation of the Torres Straight Islands through the Straight's four winds, which mark the passage of time and the coming and going of the seasons.

Workshops: urban dance; contemporary Torres Straight Islander danceWorks: Winds of Woerr (2014)

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We began working with Attakkalari in 2012 in a partnership that forms the pivotal component of our growing networks in this region.

We sent Australian choreographers to the FACETS mentorship program in 2013 and 2015, where they worked in residence for 6 weeks and had the opportunity to present their work in the celebrated Attakkalari India Biennial. Attakkalari director Jayachandran Palazhy facilitated a workshop at Critical Path in 2012, and our director Margie Medlin was a mentor at FACETS in 2013 and directed Time Frames, an outreach program for Attakkalari's education program for which she was a �nalist in the Australian Arts Asia Awards. In 2015, Critical Path will present the Indian choreographer Hemabharathy Palani in Sydney and Narelle Benjamin, one of the

CRITICAL PATH & ATTAKKALARI CENTRE FOR MOVEMENT ARTS (IN)

artists featured in this booklet, will teach at Attakkalari in their Talent Academy program.

This partnership is foundational to our shared development of a bilateral contemporary dance network between Australia and India, and through Attakkalari's work in the region, between Australia and South Asia more broadly.

www.attakkalaribiennial.org

CASESTUDIES

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In addition to studio residencies, Critical Path works with cultural agencies to host international artists in residence for up to 3 months in our Research Room, a small o�ce equipped with research and video editing facilities onsite at the Drill Hall.

We have had artists in the Research Room from Brussels, Brazil, Singapore, Germany and the Netherlands working on choreographic-related projects.

CRITICAL PATH'S RESEARCH ROOM

Our partnership with Dance4 is our longest running; we have been exchanging artists in residence on an annual basis for close to 10 years. Two artists featured in the booklet, Martin del Amo and Miranda Wheen represent the span of this partnership: Martin was one of our �rst artists sent to the UK, in 2006, to work with UK live artists Traci Kelly and Richard Hancock; and Miranda along with Matt Cornell are our latest, in residence at Dance4's studios in late 2014.

The format of each individual residency might be di�erent, and is negotiated according to current context and the artists involved; but what is common is a mutual dedication by the 2 organisations to the continuation of the partnership and

CRITICAL PATH & DANCE4 (UK)

For example, in 2014 we hosted André Bern from Brazil who shared his research project Correspondances which is based on the idea of sharing movement content via the internet, and Peter Lenaerts a composer and photographer from Brussels who developed his project MicroSleepDub about micro sound, architecture and urbanism.

development of challenging, research-driven dance practice. To date, Critical Path has hosted seven UK artists in Sydney, and has sent seven Australian artists to Dance4.

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NARELLE BENJAMIN

Workshops: yoga; dance technique; somatic explorationWorks: Hiding in Plain Sight (2014); KAAL (2013); No Body (2012)

image: Heidrun Löhr

When you become aware of perception you forget about the action. The perception becomes the focus� one's personal relationship to the incoming information. This is when surprising movement patterns emerge.

As an independent choreographer, Narelle has developed an intricate and physically exciting movement practice that combines her training in Western contemporary dance with a lifelong study and practice of yoga, and more recently incorporating her study of Shaolin martial arts. As a dancer, she has worked with most of the principal companies in Australia, including Australian Dance Theatre, Chunky Move and Bangarra Dance Theatre, and has choreographed for Sydney Dance Company, the Australian Ballet and One Extra Dance, among others.

Her �rst full-length work, In Glass, received an Australian Dance Award in 2011, and she is the 2014-15 recipient of the Australia

Council for the Arts Dance Fellowship. In addition to choreography for the stage, Narelle has won awards for her dance on screen work.

Somatic and kinaesthetic enquiries are at the core of Narelle's current choreographic research: her physical training in yoga, martial arts and contemporary dance becomes a backbone from which to explore moving from instinct and the senses.

vimeo.com/narellebenjamin

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VICTORIA HUNTimage: Heidrun Löhr

(INTER)CULTURAL PRACTICES

How might we prepare ourselves to fully inhabit a place? We are all from the land - but how do we have a relationship of reciprocity to that place, our ancestors, our heritage? This is a political act, before we can even begin dancing.

Workshops: Bodyweather; site-speci�c performance making; image work in improvisationWorks: Tangi (2013); Day of Invigilation (2005); Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka (2012); performance improvisation

Victoria is an Australian-born artist working across dance, performance art, education and cultural practice. Her tribal a�liations are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu Maori, English and Irish. She is a founding member of Bodyweather dance company De Quincey Co. since 1999, and has toured internationally with MAU (2006-07). Since 2008 she has been the dance educator at EORA College, a centre for Indigenous training in Sydney, and has led professional movement classes since 2001.

Victoria's core movement practice is Bodyweather, and so relationship to place, image and sensory-based work are all primary approaches to working with the

body. This is combined with research into her Paci�c cultural heritage. Over the last decade she has been conducting research into Hinemihi, a female ancestor and ceremonial space connected to her Maori heritage, whose story is danced in two recent works, the latter of which toured to the ORIGINS Festival of First Nations in London in 2013. These and other works form an ongoing examination of the processes of objecti�cation and legacies of colonisation for Indigenous peoples. Visually powerful and arresting, her work moves between installation, video, and multimedia performance.

victoriahuntperformance.wordpress.com

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SUE HEALEYimage: Judd Overton

As a choreographer, I am immersed in the visual �eld�in both the acts of seeing and being seen. The dance performer is an expert in negotiating this territory� As a moving image-maker, I must ask �how do we see�? In our screen-based culture we experience an overwhelming deluge of moving images on a daily basis.

A choreographer, educator, �lmmaker and installation artist, Sue is one of Australia's foremost dance-makers and widely regarded as one of the region's �nest dance-�lmmakers. Originally from New Zealand, she received the prestigious Australia Council Creative Fellowship in 2013-14 and was recently made an Honorary Fellow of the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. With her own Sue Healey Company she has toured numerous dance works for theatres, galleries, speci�c sites and screens across Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. She has an enduring connection with Japan, having

made 4 major works for the Aichi Arts Centre in Nagoya and Red Brick Warehouse in Yokohama.

The crafting of movement, time and space is at the heart of Sue's work, experimenting as she does at the boundaries between the choreographic and the �lmic. She often works in series, making a live work, �lm, video installation and/or installation performance as a collection of works that are conceptually linked. Her current work explores the nature of visual perception.

suehealey.com.au

Workshops: dance technique and composition; choreography for the camera; video editing; artist lecture/screeningWorks: Virtuosi (2013); Variant (2012); Curiosities (2009); As You Take Time (2007)

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ALEJANDRO ROLANDIimage: Richard Freeman

DANCE + MEDIA ART

My interest in interactive technology was born from a desire to be able to distort or transform the appearance of the human body. My media work is intrinsically linked to my dance practice�Contact Improvisation is the glue that keeps everything together. Making the light wearable was about �nding out how to move with it.

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Workshops: Contact Improvisation; interactive technologies for performanceWorks: In Common, Opposite Tangents, Time and Landscape (2014); with Stalker Theatre, Pixel Mountain (2014), Phosphori (2013), Encoded (2012)

Alejandro is a Sydney-based performance artist, originally from Buenos Aries, Argentina. The foundation of his movement practice is Contact Improvisation (CI), and he is a highly sought-after teacher of CI by universities and dance companies. Since 2010, Alejandro has begun to develop a choreographic practice that investigates ways to build scores and sequences using the language of Contact Improvisation.

Alejandro has also worked with major physical theatre companies in Australia including Legs on the Wall and Stalker Theatre, and is the director of Strings

Attached, a dance theatre collective that creates work using aerial systems and large custom-built steel structures. In 2011 he completed a 4-month residency at the University of Technology Sydney researching interactive technologies for performance; and, with Stalker, he has worked as a digital artist on several productions, designing wearable lighting and projection systems that utilise prototype remote-controlled wearable LEDs. He recently worked on Pixel Mountain (2013), a collaboration with Korean artists for the Gwacheon Festival and Hi Seoul.

stringsattached.com.au

image: Matt Cornell

MIRANDA WHEENWhen I dance I always try to frame it as research. Particularly when training or improvising, these times when my focus is very attuned to sensation and the body, I try to make discoveries and deepen my understanding of my dance, and the way I think about dance.

Workshops: contemporary/modern dance technique; methods for dancer trainingWorks: Between Two and Zero (2014); Safe Hands (2014), Yes I Can (2013)

A highly versatile performer, Miranda has collaborated with a number of companies and choreographers throughout Australia and internationally, including: Shaun Parker and Company, Mirramu Dance Company, Restless Dance Theatre, Martin Del Amo, Marrugeku, Stalker Theatre and the Tsai Jui-Yueh Dance Foundation in Taiwan, among others. Miranda has studied in Senegal, West Africa, with choreographer Germaine Acogny at L'Ecole des Sables, the International School for Contemporary and Traditional African Dance, and for 3 years was a participant in the International Indigenous Choreographic Laboratories held in Sydney, Broome and Auckland.

Miranda's current research draws ideas of training and performance into close relationship with one another: she has been developing methods of training for the independent dancer that focus on inherited techniques and methodologies as a basis for exploration. Her experiences with a vast array of collaborators, teachers and choreographers thus become corporeally embedded data�a corporeal archive�to which she builds a high level of attunement for further choreographic investigations, whether in the devising process of another choreographer or her own emerging choreographic practice.

mirandawheen.com

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image: Heidrun Löhr

MARTIN DEL AMO

THINKING THROUGH THE BODY

As dancers, we are trained to perform extremely complex movement material and make it look e�ortless. It's precisely our training, however, that sometimes makes us forget how powerful a simple gesture can be, or a moment of stillness, or a mere �ick of an isolated body part.

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Workshops: solo performance making; composition; dramaturgy; improvisation Works: Little Black Dress Suite (2013); Anatomy of an Afternoon (2012); Mountains Never Meet (2011)

Originally from Germany, Martin started out as solo artist acclaimed for his full-length solos fusing idiosyncratic movement and intimate storytelling. He has also built a strong reputation as creator of group works and solos for others. His Helpmann Award-nominated Anatomy of an Afternoon, which premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2012, was recently presented with great success at Southbank Centre in London. His work has toured nationally and internationally to the UK, Japan and Brazil.

Fundamental to Martin's movement practice is a detailed set of strategies and exercises�what he calls 'parameter

work'�that build the body's sensory awareness through structured improvisation. These strategies have been developed to re�ect his key choreographic concerns (such as corporeal fragmentation, the relationship of movement to stillness and the manipulation of the body by external forces), and have been applied to work with a diverse range of performers�from highly trained contemporary dancers to actors and untrained community performers. A valued teacher, Martin regularly facilitates workshops for a wide range of arts companies and has worked extensively as a consultant, dramaturg and mentor.

martindelamo.com

Australia is a big country in the Asia-Paci�c region; we are historically positioned between Europe and Asia with a culture shaped by at least 50,000 years of continued, unbroken Indigenous storytelling and much more recently, by migration from around the world. This history and culture has helped to form an international outlook in the arts in Australia. According to the Australia Council for the Arts, 1 in 3 Australian artists has engaged in international work.

Many of the dance artists featured in this booklet have been involved in making and presenting work overseas�either through existing Critical Path exchange programs, through other residency programs or through their own international touring.

At Critical Path we see important bene�ts in international and intercultural exchange for both our artists and our organisation:

Establishing the grounds for long-lasting links between artists

Seeding new collaborations and engagement across distances

Challenging approaches to practice, both aesthetically and culturally

Forging new networks for creative learning, research and development, and presentation

INTERNATIONAL & INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE

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CONTACT USWe welcome you to contact us for more information.

This booklet provides an overview of Critical Path�s approach to international artist exchange. Begin a conversation with us and we can work with you to build a residency-workshop program that is tailored to your organisation, provide referral to artists, discuss hosting and interning opportunities at the Drill and perhaps �nd links to multilateral programs in conjunction with our established partners.

It is a great luxury to think objectively about your own practice; to look at it from another perspective certainly breathes new life and brings inspiration to your work.

LEE WILSON

Dance is so deeply linked to culture, place and people. Exchange, particularly international or cultural exchange, seems essential to challenge and broaden bodily assumptions, methodologies, habits, ideas and processes. Collaboration that involves the exchange of physical languages cannot help but in�uence your dance and your ways of thinking about dance.

MIRANDA WHEEN

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The Drill, 1c New Beach Rd, Rushcutters BayPO Box 992, Edgecli�, NSW 2027, Australia+61 2 9362 9403 | projects@criticalpath.org.au

Cover image: Margie Medlin, Improvisational Practices Symposium Bat Cave curated by Emma Saunders

Critical Path is an initiative of Arts NSW, with program funding from the Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.