Dancehouse, in partnership with Insite Arts and with support of Creative Australia, Arts SA and Create NSW, is thrilled to announce a new pilot Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) 2024.

The Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) is an artist professional development initiative to build and support the voices, practices, and livelihoods of independent Australian choreographers. The program encourages independent choreographers to connect with others and invest time in their creativity, practice, skills, knowledge, confidence and networks.

At the heart of the Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) are 3 in-person intensives at Dancehouse across August-December 2024 where participants practise, collaborate, share, and create together building to a sharing for industry peers and audiences. Between the intensives, participants have mentoring and self-directed practice and research sessions.

In 2024, the Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) invited 14 practising choreographers to participate from expressions of interest, including 4 interstate participants (2 from SA, and 3 from NSW). Participants come from a range of different dance forms, training, cultures, experiences, and backgrounds. All dance forms, training and backgrounds are valued and encouraged.

The Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) 2024 pilot is informed by the success and learnings of Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographers Program (ECP) 2020-22. This pilot program will test some core developments including the intensive program structure, and the welcoming of interstate participants (2 from South Australia, and 2 from NSW).

2024 ICP Recipients

• Carmen Yih
• Christopher Gurusamy
• Chung Nguyen
• Daksha Ramesh Swaminathan
• Dylan Goh
• Jonathan Sinatra
• Karlia Cook
• Maggie Chen
• Mara Jon Happy Galagher
• Max Burgess
• Nadezda Simonovits
• Raina Peterson
• Tanya Voges
• Victoria Hunt

2024 ICP Mentors

Bec Reid (Lead Artist Facilitator)

Bec Reid (she/her) is third culture kid and an Australian based Performer, Producer, Director and Choreographer. Bec encourages people to experience their worlds in revelatory ways through highly physical, participatory, practical and celebratory actions. For 20+ years, Bec has passionately collaborated where professional Artists and communities coalesce; locally, nationally and internationally.

A WAAPA graduate, Bec began her professional career as Artistic Director of Stompin in Lutruwita (Tasmania), together with Luke George. Together with art wife Tristan Meecham, Bec is the co-Founder of All The Queens Men and with Ian Pidd and Kate McDonald, co-created Everybody NOW! From 2021 – 2023 Bec also generated investment in L2R Dance.

Bec was Rimini Protokoll’s Associate Director of reality- theatre juggernauts, 100% Melbourne (City of Melbourne), 100% Darwin (Darwin Festival) and 100% Brisbane (Museum of Brisbane) and has collaborated with Tracks Dance Company across 20+ years.

Stephanie Lake

Stephanie Lake is a multi-award-winning choreographer, dancer and artistic director of Stephanie Lake Company based in Melbourne. She is also the Resident Choreographer of The Australian Ballet. Her major works including Manifesto, Colossus, Circle Electric, Monsters, Replica, Pile of Bones, Double Blind, DUAL, A Small Prometheus, AORTA and Mix Tape have been performed across Australia toured extensively internationally to France, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, China and Belgium.

Stephanie has created many works for Sydney Dance Company, The Australian Ballet, Queensland Ballet, Dancenorth, New Zealand Dance Company, Chunky Move, Tasdance, Expressions Dance Company, Australasian Dance Collective, Beijing Dance/LDTX, Stompin, Frontier Danceland (Singapore), Sydney Symphony and the Victorian College of the Arts. She collaborates across theatre, film and TV, visual art and music video and has directed several large-scale public dance works involving over 1500 participants.

Stephanie ’s works have been awarded Helpmann, Green Room and Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Choreography. She is the recipient of a prestigious Australia Council Fellowship, Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, Chloe Munro Fellowship and Dame Peggy Van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship. Her performance career spanned twenty years, touring and dancing extensively with Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc and Phillip Adams’ BalletLab. Stephanie sits on the Victorian College of the Arts Advisory Board and is Ambassador for Stompin youth dance company.

Dr. Priya Srinivasan

Dr. Priya Srinivasan is an award winning performer, choreographer, and writer, who co-founded and leads Sangam, a transformative cultural platform addressing inequity in the arts in Naarm. Since 2019, Sangam has thrived under her guidance, showcasing hundreds of South Asian creatives towards self representation and artistic excellence on Australia’s funded stages. Rooted in Indian classical dance, Priya’s work emphasizes feminist decolonization, spotlighting minority women’s stories and First Nations exchanges. She has a PhD in Performance Studies and has published an award winning book: Indian Dance as Transnational Labour (2012) which is taught worldwide.

As a choreographer and director her acclaimed intercultural, collaborative pieces have graced stages, museums, site specific locations worldwide, from the USA, China, Europe, India to Australia. Her groundbreaking work bringing research into practice has shifted notions of what counts as contemporary art in Australia. Her most recent acclaimed interdisciplinary, intergenerational performance with Uthra Vijay and Philipa Rothfield, The Durga Chronicles won a Green Room Award (2023); Agam, a collaboration with Hari Sivanesan and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra resulted in an unprecedented, highly successful large scale intercultural performance at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (2023); Sangam Labs Leadership Exchange in Bengaluru brought together intersectional artistic leaders and organisations between India and Australia (2024) with the support of Global Victoria. Priya is the inaugural recipient of the Asia Pacific Impact Award from Creative Australia (2024).

Jahra Wasasala

Jahra (Arieta) Wasasala is a Fijian/Pakeha world-builder, movement psychopomp and writer of realms. Within Viti, they hail from the provinces of Macuata and Ba.

Jahra’s practice centres embodied and disembodied phenomena, bridging the phenomena’s breadth of physicality into shared performances. Jahra’s body of work builds into visions of liberation and calls in memories of creature-led language, located in-between one world ending and another world beginning.

Regarded as an ‘unreal within a beyond-body’, Jahra centres the dance and voice of the ‘beyond-body’ as their tool of transmutation, serving as the beginning and returning point for  their world-building and world-bending practice. Jahra’s dance training continues to evolve as they currently train within Krump, Physical Theatre, Body Control techniques and Animation, Butoh study, Waving, Character work, Release technique  and ‘Creature-Conditioning’, which comprises of movement mobility and strength training through non-human movement research. Jahra’s approach to their practice is pantheon-based, grounded in belief and speaks into Tagata Moana future-mythos. Intuitive yet deliberate, disciplined yet Spirit-led, Jahra’s public practice is known for it’s other-worldly physicality, belief immersion and transcendent performances.

Ooshcon

Embedded in love and devoted to flow – ooshcon is a Samoan ‘decipher of circles’, who specialises in free-body methodologies. The core belief ‘ina ia sosolo le alofa / so love may flow’ is imbued into ooshcon’s evolving practice and way of being.

ooshcon’s work is grounded and actualised through the forms and philosophies of Waving Dance culture, Krump Dance culture, Animation Dance, Geometric Dance, Breath-work and Character/Entity-building. ooshcon embraces these forms with emotional rigour and innovative theatrical practices in pursuit of ‘formlessness’.

ooshcon is a trusted facilitator throughout his practice and communities. Through his work ooshcon strives to symbolically assist others to journey into new personal depths and build on their own ‘emotional content’.

2024 Key Information

Program Structure

The Independent Choreographers Program (ICP) has a series of phases:

• Briefing and de-briefing sessions before and after the program
• One-on-one mentoring
• The in-person intensives at Dancehouse in August, October and December (x3)
• Self-directed weekly practice and research throughout the program
• Alumni producing support and invitations to participate in future ICP programs, workshops and offers

The Intensives —as the name suggests— requires the largest in-person time and commitment for participants and are outlined below. Intensives are compulsory.

INTENSIVE #1 — Research and Practice

6 days | 5-10 August 2024

> Land and acknowledge Wurrundjeri country

> Meet other participants and artists and develop own code of conduct, meet mentor

> Masterclass (3 hours) and workshops by independent artists (2 hours)

> Collaboration sessions

> Dinners and lunches, walks and check in/ outs with each other daily

INTENSIVE #2 — Sharing and feedback

3-4 days | 24- 27 October 2024

> Production and technical in-theatre training

> Masterclasses and workshops

> Dramaturgy and feedback sessions

> Each participant offers a sharing of work/ practice

INTENSIVE #3 — Presentation

4 days | 4-7 December 2024

> Rehearsals and technical and dress runs for each shared work

> Sharing of works to industry and/ or audience repeated 3 times (Fri, Sat matinee, Sat)

What ICP participants receive

• 1 x 6-day, and 1 x 4-day intensive choreographic program at Dancehouse
• Approximately 8 artist-led workshops (2hrs), and 6 masterclasses (3 hrs)
• An independent artist mentor (4 x 45 min individual sessions)
• Seminars on production and tech, dramaturgy and feedback, and ‘dance admin’ e.g. grant writing, tax
• Exchange with other independent artists about their approach to making and creating, sustaining their choreographic practice and/ or making a living
• At least 14 in-kind studio sessions at Dancehouse (or local studio) to sustain your practice throughout the program
• An opportunity to share a short work or piece of choreographic research to industry and/ or audiences at the end of the program
• Some catering and hosting during intensives
• An annual Dancehouse membership
• Invitations to all Dancehouse shows and events in 2024
• As alumni, ongoing check-in and producer advice/ support with both Dancehouse and Insite in the year following the program (2025) and access to workshops in future ICPs

What ICP participants contribute

• Your time and compulsory attendance for the 3 x intensives
• A short new work or choreographic experiment/s to share with your peers and/ or audiences at the conclusion of the program
• Your enthusiasm and generosity with yourself, your fellow participants, and the ICP artists, facilitators and partners

SA and NSW participants

For the pilot Independent Choreographers Program in 2024, 5 places were made available for interstate participants: TWO from South Australia, and THREE from New South Wales.

To support attendance of the Independent Choreographers Program in Melbourne, each interstate participant receives:

• Shared accommodation in Melbourne close to Dancehouse with other interstate participants;
• Per diems;
• Flights to and from Melbourne;
• Ground transfers to and from the airport.

KEY DATES (2024)

April-May ICP Lead artist facilitator and mentors announced
Wed 15 May EOIs close
Mon 24 June All applicants notified

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Fri 5 July ICP participant online briefing
Mon 5-Sat 10 August Intensive #1 — practice and research
August-October Self-directed weekly practice and creation sessions
Thu 24-Sun 27 October Intensive #2 — sharing and feedback
October-December Self-directed weekly practice and creation sessions
4-7 December Intensive #3 — presentations
December ICP participant online debriefing