New Experiences In The Digital World
Anne Dunn, Executive Director, Sydney Dance Company
Anne has 20 years’ experience in the performing arts and has been Sydney Dance Company Executive Director since 2010. She was previously the Darwin Festival General Manager (2006-09), Perth International Arts Festival Program Manager and Artistic Administrator (2003-06), and previously held roles in the producers unit of Sydney Opera House and with the Sydney Olympic Coordination Authority.
Anne iscurrently convenor, National Dance Manager Meetings (2011-present), and joined the Sydney Opera House Trust 1 Jan 2018 & is a member of their Audit and Risk Committee. She has previously been Chair of Music NT (2007-2009) and was a Council Member, Performing Arts Touring Alliance Management (2016-2019).
She isgraduated with a BA Hons from Macquarie University.
Lydia Connolly-Hiatt
Lydia Connolly-Hiatt is a settler working as a
dance-maker and performer on unceded Woiwurrung country, of the wider Kulin nation. They are a 2015 dance graduate of Unitec (BPSA, Aotearoa). Lydia makes solo and collaborative work while performing with dance-artists and companies, including Shelley Lasica, Lillian Steiner, Chunky Move, Melanie Lane, Ellen Davies & Alice Heyward.
Currently Lydia is working on a new solo project for Chunky Move’s ‘Solitude’ program. Lydia has created two solo works; ‘Archive for SF’ (Kindled Spirits, Grey Gardens Gallery & Blockprojects 2020) and ‘Precarious Skin’, (Auckland Fringe 2017, Bluestone Church Arts Space 2017 & Ponderosa, Germany 2018). Lydia has received support from Australian Council of the Arts, Ausdance and Dancehouse. Lydia works collaboratively with Jess Gall (PowerTrip 2019 & Djap Wurrung Embassy Fundraiser 2019) and Talia Rothstein, (Aeso Studios 2018, Mars Rooftop Performance Art 2018, Bluestone Church Arts Space 2017 and Brunswick Mechanics Institute 2019).
Lilian Steiner
Lilian Steiner is a Narrm/Melbourne-based choreographer, dancer and performer, and a raduate of the Bachelor of Dance program at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her practice champions the deep intelligence of the body and its unique ability to reveal and comment on the complexities of contemporary humanity.
As an independent choreographer she has been fortunate to share her work both within Australia and internationally. Locally these have included presentations as part of Dance Massive (2017 & 2019), the Keir Choreographic Award (2018), FAUX MO at Mona Foma (2018), Next Wave Festival (2016), Melbourne Fringe Festival (2014 & 2015), Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria (2014) and Lucy Guerin Inc.’s Pieces for Small Spaces (2012). International presentations include B.Motion Festival, Bassano del Grappa (2019), Deltebre Dansa, Spain (2019), Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris (2018), Fête de la Musique, Geneva (2018), Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie, Paris (2018), Constellations Festival, Toulon, France (2018) and Hong Kong International Choreography Festival (2017).
As a dancer, Lilian is a long-term performer/collaborator with Melbourne-based company Lucy Guerin Inc. She is a repeat collaborator and performer with Australian choreographers Phillip Adams (Balletlab), Shelley Lasica and Melanie Lane amongst others and with artists working with performance and sculpture/film inside the visual arts and experimental sound performance.
Lilian received the Green Room Award for Best Female Dancer in both 2017 and 2018, as well as the Helpmann Award in 2017.
Sarah Aiken
Sarah Aiken is a Melbourne based performer
and choreographer. Sarah’s work investigates authorship, scale and the self, looking at the roles of audience, performer, subject and object and connecting tangibly with audiences, to consider performance as a site for empathy & exchange. Sarah is co-director of Deep Soulful Sweats, working with Rebecca Jensen to create work that engages rigorously with participation, scale, waste and reckless formalism, recycling content to consider materiality and how we come together.
Sarah has presented nationally and internationally including Dance Massive, Arts Centre Melbourne, Castlemaine State Festival, Dancehouse (Housemate Resident XIV), The Substation/LGI, Keir Choreographic Awards (finalist 2014 & 2016), VCA, Brisbane Festival, PICA, Ian Potter Museum, Immigration Museum, Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie (Paris), and Dancemakers Toronto. Sarah is an Australia Council artist-in-resident at HIAP, Helsinki 2020/21.
Joel Bray
A Melbourne-based artist, Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri man, who trained at NAISDA and WAAPA and is an ongoing performer with CHUNKY MOVE.
Joel’s early career was in Europe and Israel with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Company CeDeCe , Kolben Dance, Machol Shalem Dance House, Yoram Karmi’s FRESCO Dance Company, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor and Roy Assaf. Joel’s choreographic practice includes making dance, dance-theatre and works for young audiences.
Joel’s solo performance BILADURANG sold out and won three Melbourne Fringe Awards. His second work Dharawungara was commissioned by CHUNKY MOVE and was a choreographic lament for the ceremony stolen from him by the Coloniser. Daddy was commissioned by the Yirramboi Festival, Arts House and Liveworks (Sydney). Joel’s works have toured to the Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin, Midsumma, Auckland and Dance Massive festivals and to Arts Centre melbourne.
Joel’s practice springs from his Wiradjuri cultural heritage. His works are intimate encounters in unorthodox spaces, in which audience-members are invited in as co-storytellers to explore the experiences of fair-skinned Aboriginal people, and the experiences of contemporary gay men in an increasingly digital and isolated world. His body becomes the intersection site of those songlines- Indigenous heritage, skin-colour and queer sexuality.
Image credit: Complexity of Belonging, Chunky Move. Credit Jeff Busby.