The 2023 Dance (Lens) Festival
July 13 – 31 2023
Dancehouse’s biennial festival of dance on screen returns 13-31 from July with 37 screendance works screened at Dancehouse and digitally on demand. The festival also includes live and online talks, and four workshops for screendance makers.
The 2023 Dance (Lens) Festival is curated by three screendance artists and curators: Siobhan Murphy (Vic), Feras Shaheen (NSW) and international renowned guest curator Gitta Wigro (UK).
The curators program the festival from a National callout, including the ‘Official Selection’ of recent local Australian screendance works.
There are 7 screening sessions at Dancehouse for Dance (Lens) Festival from Thursday 13 to Saturday 15 July — most about 40 minutes in duration.
The Dance (Lens) Official Selection program features a variety of dance on screen works including a home-grown spaghetti western, an exploration of cataclysm from expert Bharatnatyam performer Anandavalli, an interspecies collage of dancing human-worm chimeras, a surreal and whimsical animation about parklife during COVID lockdowns, and an extended music-video clip celebrating Jamaican dancehall.
18 Australian artists are featured in the Dance (Lens) Official Selection, including: Amber McCartney, Anna White, Azzam Mohamed, Claire Esterman,Claire Marshall, Cobie Orger, Erin O’Rourke, Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Iqbal Barkat, Jude Walton, Karen Berger, Peter Fraser, Prue Lang, Rachel Owens, Rob Aspinall, Sarah Aiken, Teresa Blake, and Thuy Vy.
In addition to the Official Selection program, each of the Dance (Lens) curator has created a session of influential screendance works on a curatorial theme. Feras Shaheen sees dance as a tool of unification in Out of Line. Water, paint, dust, fabric, sand, grass and debris are explored in Siobhan Murphy’s Material Moves, and international guest curator Gitta Wigro (UK) invites us to ‘observe what you hear’ in Sound Into Sight.
Dance (Lens) Festival in 2023 is supported by the Besen Family Foundation.
QUOTE
Dancehouse loves Dance (Lens), it’s a delightful winter festival which invites you to binge on the talent of our local artists at screenings at Dancehouse or at home On Demand. Dance on screen is its own artform and a great way to experience dance outside the reality TV format. Dance (Lens) celebrates everything from the music video, to the moving portrait, home movies, cultural celebrations, dance through memory and site. The Dance (Lens) curators have also brought us three exciting programs of screendance works around key curatorial themes including materiality and site, the use of sound in dance on screen, and dance as a tool for unification.
— Josh Wright, CEO/ Artistic Director, Dancehouse
