Dance (Lens)
Dance (Lens)
— Australia’s premier platform for screendance
Since 2020, Dancehouse’s Dance (Lens) has presented three festivals (2021, 2023, 2025), two mini programs (2022, 2024) comprising in-person screenings, workshops and masterclasses, special events, talks and resources and online broadcast. To date, Dance (Lens) has screened over 130 dance films — mostly from Australia.
Hosted biennially in Winter, Dance (Lens) Festival is a multi-day event with multiple sessions of short works alongside In Focus talks and events and masterclasses. In 2025, Dance (Lens) Festival enjoyed full houses across all 9 sessions.
Offered in late Spring in the non-Festival year, Dance (Lens) Mini offers a more focussed and experimental program for works that don’t fit into the ‘shorts’ format. Dance (Lens) Mini also offers Scratch Night for artists to share and feedback on screendance works in development.
In Focus is Dance (Lens)’ program of free special events, talks, seminars, essays, interviews, public programs, and resources surrounding screendance which feature across our programs.
Dancehouse is proud to offer Dance (Lens) as a keynote program offering partnerships regionally, interstate and internationally to advocate for this hybrid medium, fostering its development, supporting and celebrating the forms’ artists, and building and expanding screendance audiences.
Alongside Dancehouse CEO/ Artistic Director, Dance (Lens) is co-curated by screendance artists and curators including: Siobhan Murphy (Victoria | 2021, 2023, 2025); Erin Brannigan (NSW | 2025); Joshua Faleatua (NZ | 2025); Elyssa Wendi (Hong Kong | 2025); Feras Shaheen (NSW | 2023); Gitta Wigro (UK | 2023); Melissa Ramos (NSW | 2021); and André Shannon (NSW | 2021).
Dance (Lens) Festival 2025
Dancehouse’s biennial festival of dance on screen from 10-12 July 2025 shared an enthralling array of local, international, and historical screendance works.
The 2025 Dance (Lens) Festival hosted three specially curated programs including a selection of shorts from the internationally-recognised Cinedans program; a session dedicated to the agency of the camera in The Camera Behaves curated by Siobhan Murphy; and a celebration of Victorian artists in ReelDance Retrospective curated by Erin Brannigan.
This year’s Official Selection program #1, #2 and #3 features 17 recent Australian screendance works from artists including: Colleen Coy, Efren Pamilacan, Gabriel Sinclair, Jo Pollitt, Joyce Liu, Jozsef Trefeli, Jude Walton, Lee Kien Fei, Mischa Baka, Outer Urban Projects, Tara Jade Samaya and Pippa Samaya, Rachel Coulson and Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Rebekah Stuart, Rhys Ryan, Sue Hawksley, and Yuiko Masukawa.
At 5.30pm, before each night’s screenings, free IN FOCUS talks, performances, installations and discussions celebrated the works and practices of screendance artists, curators, and thinkers including Bronwen Kamasz, Jonathan Sinatra, Joshua ‘Fale’ Faleatua, Erin Brannigan, Tony Yap and Michelle Heaven.
For makers, the 2025 Dance (Lens) Festival presented two special MASTERCLASSES with Takeshi Kondo and Darrin Verhagen to explore both practical and creative techniques, and approaches to enhance and expand screendance making.
Dance (Lens) Festival was available digitally on demand after the Festival till 31 July.
Dance (Lens) Mini 2024
Dancehouse offered an exciting taster of screendance installations, talks, workshops and a Scratch Night as part of Dance (Lens) Mini 2024 (26-30 November 2024) and as the lead-in to the biennial Dance (Lens) Festival in July 2025.
The 2024 Dance (Lens) Mini welcomed the installation of Sue Healey’s moving celebration of Australia’s pioneering women in dance ON VIEW: ICONS. The work was launched as part of the Moving Portraits opening event with an in-conversation with Sue Healey, Siobhan Murphy, Cobie Orger and Alice Cummins and the screening of terra by Cobie Orger, and Doing the Work by Siobhan Murphy.
The inaugural Dance (Lens) Scratch Night shared works-in-progress of new screendance works for feedback, and as always, Dance (Lens) Mini features three spectacular Dance (Lens) Workshops with Sue Healey, Siobhan Murphy, and Cobie Orger.
Dance (Lens) Festival 2023
Dancehouse’s biennial festival of dance on screen returned in 2023 from 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 was curated by three screendance artists and curators: Siobhan Murphy (Vic), Feras Shaheen (NSW) and internationally 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.
The Dance (Lens) Official Selection program featured 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.
The Dance (Lens) Official Selection featured 18 Australian artists, 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) 2023 curators has created a session of influential screendance works around a different curatorial theme. Feras Shaheen saw 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.
For makers attending the opening week of Dance (Lens), Cobie Orger and Siobhan Murphy offered four workshops to build skills and strategies to create screendance works.
Dance (Lens) Festival in 2023 was supported by the Besen Family foundation.
!['Composite Acts' (2019), David Rosetzky [still].](https://www.dancehouse.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/STILL-—-Composite-Acts-by-David-Rosetzky-1000x530.jpg)
Dance (Lens) Mini 2022
Ahead of the 2023 Dance (Lens) Festival, Dancehouse hosted a weekend taster from 26—27 November 2022 including screendance workshops for all experience levels, with Siobhan Murphy and Cobie Orger, and a special IN FOCUS screening with David Rosetsky.
Dance (Lens) Festival 2021
The Dance (Lens) Festival showcased over 30 outstanding international and national screendance works curated by André Shannon, Melissa Ramos and Siobhan Murphy.
Dance (Lens) ran On Demand from 29 July—29 August 2021 during COVID lockdowns in Melbourne. The Festival also hosted a repeat in-person screening live at Dancehouse over one weekend (19—21 November). Live movie marathon program >>
Dance (Lens) 2020
In 2020, during the long days of the COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne, Dancehouse initiated Dance (Lens) a digital broadcast series highlighted outstanding screendance works from Australia and overseas alongside artist Q&As with makers and curators.
At a time when dancing together was impossible, Dance (Lens) explored the embodiment and disembodiment of dance, speculative stages, screening history, and the communal experience of watching dance on the other side of the screen.