The Thing That Matters
DreamBIG Children’s Festival
DreamBIG Children’s Festival – the world’s first, and longest-running, children’s festival. More than 2.5 million children have participated in the festival since its inception in 1974 (as Come Out Festival), and it remains an intrinsic part of growing up in South Australia. This year’s festival, from May 17-27, focuses on the theme ‘Our World,’ and features more than 50 shows, activities, and exhibitions for audiences from babies to teenagers across 10 days.
The Thing That Matters from Sally Chance Dance. Sally practices in the field of perinatal infant mental health using dance to support the critical first relationship between mother and baby and has worked with over 40 Adelaide families to create this new dance-theatre performance.
THE THING THAT MATTERS: Babies and very young children will love Sally Chance Dance and her ensemble of Adelaide families as they go on a growing, crawling, walking, running and dancing journey through an entire lifespan. Love, family and memories to treasure, The Thing That Matters is dance-theatre presented with original live music for the youngest audiences. Things matter at different life stages for different reasons. Sometimes everything matters and nothing matters all at once. Event page: https://www.
SALLY CHANCE: Sally Chance is a dance-theatre artist. She trained at Trinity Laban, London, and is motivated by the power of collaborating with specific communities whose artistic perspectives open the door to new performance forms. For the past fifteen years, beginning with an Australia Council Fellowship, Sally’s work has been dedicated to the cultural lives of children aged three years and younger. In 2020 she completed doctoral study in the field of Theatre for Early Years at the Queensland University of Technology, Meanjin/Brisbane. In collaboration with the members of her South Australia-based independent company – Sally Chance Dance – she has created, presented and toured five new performance works and co-created other works including Flower 꽃, a collaboration with Seoul-based Theatre Masil. The Thing That Matters for DreamBIG 2023 will be the company’s sixth early years performance work and the third work devised through a co-creative devising process of Family Dance Labs. Sally practices in the field of perinatal infant mental health using dance to support the critical first relationship between mother and baby.
SALLY CHANCE DANCE: Sally Chance Dance is a South Australia-based independent company involving dancers Stephen Noonan and Felecia Hick, composer Heather Frahn, musicians Heather Frahn, Kelly Menhennett and Stuart Day and artistic director Sally Chance. SCD’s performance projects are produced by Insite Arts. Since 2007, SCD has created and toured new dance-theatre for children aged three years and younger, including babies. The company’s rigorous and specialist practice has evolved in consultation and co-creation with families and is known for its responsive skill set, creating the conditions in which children’s close presence as audiences and as co-creators is an important artistic feature of the work. The company summarises this with the phrase “I see you seeing me”, where the ‘I’ may be child or performer.
