Experimental Commissioning Consortium (ECC)

The Experimental Commissioning Consortium is a national initiative supporting bold, independent experimental art and performance. Led by Performance Space in partnership with organisations across Australia—including Dancehouse—the ECC creates pathways for artists to develop ambitious work through three core pillars.

The ECC comprises phases including

1. An artist lab: a two-part lab to bring a cohort of artists together to develop and test work in progress, working with the ECC and its members to seed efficient and scalable work to pitch for the second stage.
2. A commissioning fund: at the conclusion of the lab, artists are invited to pitch their projects to the ECC, and receive opportunities and development investment from the commissioning fund and early presentation opportunities to develop into tour-ready projects. 
3. A national touring circuit: once a suite of works have reached this ‘tour-ready’ stage, commissioned projects will embark on a program of national touring. Tours will include presentations with both organisations within the ECC, and with national and international organisations within the expanded networks of the ECC organisations to maximise efficiency and exposure for commissioned artists.
   

Anticipated Outcomes

The ECC program will have a range of short- and long-term outcomes and benefits to the sector. These include, but are not limited to: 

In the short term:

• Revitalised cross-sector collaboration
• The reforming of lapsed partnerships and touring networks
• The capacity to commission more ambitious work through co-investment
• The formation of a unique national artist lab for independent work
• New peer-to-peer and artist-centred dialogue and exchange
• The commissioning of innovative new Australian performances 
• The inclusion of regional arts organisations in national networks
• Audience development through collective ways of working
• Increased profile for the independent sector through this new program

In the longer term:

• Sustainable career pathways for independent artists
• Higher return on investment for funders and artists
• Restoration of the ‘missing middle’ of opportunities for independent artists
• National and international touring of new independent Australian work
• Showcasing of the independent and experimental sector internationally
• Ongoing audience development and profiling of the sector
• Advocacy for the significance of the independent/small-medium arts sector
• The embedding of collaborative processes into organisations
• Expansion of the network of organisations presenting independent performance
• The formation of innovative models of commissioning and touring that are adaptive to hyperlocal contexts

Featured ECC Artists

The consortium supports eight emerging and established artists: Cheryn Frost & Emma Kew, Chung Nguyen, Grace Connors, Katy B Plummer, Morgan Hogg, Raina Peterson, Riana Head-Touissant, and Shirin Shakhesi.

As part of the Experimental Commissioning Consortium, Dancehouse is supporting Chung Nguyen’s projects across 2026 and 2027. 

Chung Nguyen

Chung Nguyen is a Vietnamese dance artist, somatic movement facilitator and registered Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist based in Naarm/Melbourne. His work is situated at the intersection of choreography, live art, and healing through interdisciplinary, embodied, and participatory approaches. His current interests are in the examination of his personal political stories and Queer identity in relation to Vietnamese culture and history – exploring the dialogue between embodied cultural knowledge and new lived experiences within the context of his Australian migrant experience. His performances and cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaborations have been presented at international venues and platforms across Southeast Asia, Australia, the United States and South Korea, including Temperance Hall and Dancehouse (Melbourne), Cont-act Contemporary Dance Festival (Singapore), No Cai Bum Art Week and Performance Plus (Vietnam), American Dance Festival; The International Choreographers Residency (USA), to name just a few.

Chung is working on a portfolio of interconnected projects for ECC which you can read about below. They includes:

• Fluid Memories — theatrical performance
• Fluid Memories: The Waiting — a durational multimedia and performance installation for galleries and public spaces
• Breathing is Remembering
• Breathing is Remembering: Fawkner

‘Fluid Memories_ Self-portrayal’ (2024) by Chung Nguyen. Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti.

Dancehouse presented Fluid Memories from 19-22 August 2026 as part of Dancehouse Season 2

Fluid Memories

— Carrying the foreign home

In Vietnamese culture, water and soil make up a country. “Đất” means soil, “Nước” means water — together, “Đất Nước” means ‘country’.

Solo military drills, socialist symbols, and physical metaphors are reinterpreted to consider how inherited ideology shapes the body and mind, and what remains when the body is carried across borders and into new places. Chung Nguyen explores how homeland, memory and identity come to be carried and collectively embodied.

Centring Vietnamese-Australian diasporic voices, Fluid Memories navigates the entanglements between personal and political histories of body and place through the lens of post-war Vietnam.

Situated at the intersection of dance, video installation, sound, and participatory practice, Fluid Memories invites audiences into an embodied encounter with migration, memory and belonging.

Lead Artist, Choreographer and Performer Chung Nguyen
Video James Nguyen, Chung Nguyen
Visual Artist & Masks James Nguyen
Sound Composer Carolyn Schofield (aka. Fia Fiell)
Participatory Engagement Advisor Gav Barbey
Dramaturg How Ngean Lim
Producer Anna McDermott
Lighting Designer Alex Nguyen
Red Scarf Social Studio
Production Manager/ Operator Kobe Donaldson

Presented by the Immigration Museum, 10am-5pm, Saturday 19 September 2026

Fluid Memories: The Waiting

— Carrying the foreign home

In Vietnamese culture, water and soil make up a country. “Đất” means soil, “Nước” means water — together, “Đất Nước” means ‘country’.

Fluid Memories is a multi-media performance project created and performed by dance artist Chung Nguyen with a team of multi-cultural collaborators. Centring Vietnamese-Australian diasporic voices, the project explores how homeland, memory and identity come to be carried and collectively embodied – navigating the entanglements between personal and political histories of body and place through the lens of post-war Vietnam.

Previously presented  in a theatre-context at Dancehouse, the project now takes on a new form – The Waiting – a 7-hour durational performance within the Immigration Museum’s Long Room, a heritage hall within the former Customs House. Here, the artist invites audiences into an embodied encounter with migration, memory, belonging, and fieldwork into Agent Orange’s lingering presence in Fawkner. Agent Orange is a manufactured herbicide produced and deployed by the US and Australian military during the Vietnam-American War, resulting in lasting environmental and generational damage.

The Long Room carries its own history. As a former customs hall, it was a place for declaration, examination and control. The Waiting offers the opposite: an invitation into something personal and relational. Solo military drills, socialist symbols, and physical metaphors are reinterpreted to consider how inherited ideology shapes the body, and what remains when the body is carried across borders into new places.

Fluid Memories: The Waiting will take place across the duration of the Immigration Museum opening hours, 10am to 5pm. Audiences are invited to come and go as they please.

Fluid Memories: The Waiting is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants.