Ausdance NSW Announce the Recipients of Second Round for DAIR
Michelle Silby, Director of Ausdance NSW, has announced and congratulated the recipients for Round 2 of the Dance Artists in Residence (DAIR) program for 2017.
As a result of their impressive applications, a panel of external industry experts have selected these seven artists to receive residency space in-kind so that they may research, develop and show their work in metropolitan and regional areas. Ausdance NSW is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW. This initiative is facilitated through Ausdance NSW in conjunction with our venue partners without whom this initiative would not be possible.
Many thanks go to ReadyMade Works, Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), Australian College of Physical Education (ACPE), and Catapult for providing Ausdance NSW with the ability to offer space to these artists for their project and practice developments for DAIR Round 2 2017.
Rhiannon Newton – ReadyMade Works / Royal Academy of Dance
During her DAIR at ReadyMade Works in June and the Royal Academy of Dance in July Rhiannon Newton will work on ‘Doing Dancing’ towards installing this project as a series of performance events and an accumulating archive in the First Draft’s Exhibitions Program throughout August 2017. Doing Dancing involves re-iterating acts of dancing and reading. Gertrude Stein’s portrait of Isadora Duncan becomes a moving surface from which a practice of eternal dance returns, accumulates in an archive of increasingly ghosted dances.
Kristina Chan – Royal Academy of Dance
Kristina’s choreographic practice explores ideas on impermanence, fragility and mortality in nature, humanity and our environment. During her DAIR at the Royal Academy of Dance Kristina will be exploring invisible landscapes, invisible languages, unseen consequences, unseen forces, working with physical repetition and duration to provoke ideas and concepts for a starting point for a new dance work.
Nikki Heywood – ReadyMade Works
Nikki Heywood, Helen Sky and Mark Cauvin will be engaged in a research/creative development that builds on previous idiosyncratic work involving double bass and a number of objects that reflect our conflicted relationship to animals and the feminine. Their DAIR at ReadyMade Works in August will provide a perfect space for the testing of some new concepts and further experimentation and refinement of the choreographic material.
Nikki Heywood’s work in contemporary performance making spans four decades as a devisor, director, choreographer, performer, collaborator, teacher and dramaturg. Over the past two decades her work has been informed by Body weather and the perceptual practices of Deborah Hay. Her practice based research on the fragmented and unifying intelligences of the corporeal, including the body as animal, is published in the 1st edition of Animal Studies Journal http://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/ and ‘Act of Repair’ Performance Research Journal #18 On Falling.
Mikaela Carr – Catapult Dance
Mikaela Carr trained at the Victorian College of the Arts and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance.) Mikaela has participated in Prue Lang’s work-in-progress showing at Lucy Guerin’s First Run and has trained with Michael Schumacher, Cyril Baldy and Ayman Harper in Forsythe improvisation technologies for One Flat Thing. Mikaela performed in Becky Hilton’s Groupness in Pieces for Small Spaces and Observation choreographed by Brianna Kell. Mikaela is a member of Prue Lang’s PLANT Research Lab. She worked with Lang on STELLAR PROJECT presented at Dance Massive in 2017 and is currently in development with Matt Cornell. During her DAIR at Catapult Dance in Newcastle Mikaela will work on her own improvisational practice.
Laura Osweiler – Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
Laura Osweiler (aka Amara) is a performer, choreographer, teacher, producer and scholar from the United States. She holds a PhD in Dance History and Theory from the University of California Riverside, a BA in Music History and Literature and a certificate in Ethnomusicology from The Florida State University. Trained in Ballet, various forms of Middle Eastern dance, and Contemporary choreographic processes, she brings these and other dance forms into her contemporary work. During her DAIR at The Joan in October Laura will work on a mid-development interdisciplinary collaborative work with Paul Osbourne called ‘Rhizomatic Fluctuations.’
Sarah Vai & Yukino McHugh – ReadyMade Works
Sarah Vai and Yukino McHugh will use their DAIR at ReadyMade Works in November to delve into research for their upcoming choreographic film installation focussing on gender identity and physical communication. The work ‘Mx.Red’ (pronounced misread) aims to explore the conceptual rationale of a gender-fluid utopia and will be presented at the Festival of Live Art in Melbourne. Sarah will work with four dancers in the studio whilst Yukino experiments with creative immersive video.
