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Dancehouse is on Wurundjeri Country. We offer our respects to the Wurundjeri woi-wurrung people — and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people — who continue to dance on Country, and have done, for thousands of generations. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Dance Festival Principles and Framework

A renewed dance festival for Melbourne

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Now Pieces (Finalé, 2021), Dancehouse. Photo by Andrew Liu for Pride Productions.

Arts House and Dancehouse are proud to join with the dance community to share the Principles and Framework for MASSIVE (working title), a renewed dance festival for Melbourne. 

The last Dance Massive took place in March 2019. Since that time, the dance community has participated in a long-form conversation about the kind of festival Melbourne needs and aspires towards. People have shared their views in surveys, focus groups, workshops and round table discussions. There have been conversations led by artists, presenters and companies. We are proud to have involved 518 members of the dance communities here and nationwide in the discussion, through a time of significant challenge for our artform and sector.

Now, we have a Principles and Framework that are a joint expression of those ideas.

These Principles and Framework are an open invitation for your organisation to partner with us to create this new festival.

The first meeting of the new Partners for the festival will be held on April 21st from 12pm – 2:30pm in the Supper Room at Arts House.

Partners who are ready to commit and proudly embrace these Principles and Framework, and are keen to adopt them into a Memorandum of Understanding, are invited to attend. Amrita Hepi and Tony Yap, who have been active participants throughout the development of the festival, will also attend as paid independent artist representatives. At this meeting, a process for identifying the Artist Curatorium for the festival will be determined and agreed.

After reading the Principles and Framework you will likely have questions. Good! Please join us for this first meeting on 21 April to collectively begin to answer these questions and refine what this festival is and how it will work.

We’d like to extend a sincere thanks to everyone who has shared their passion, ideas and views towards this bright new future. It has been a deeply collaborative – and long! – process to take us here, and we are now very excited to get into the doing and making, together.

What will the space be used for?

Have you hired a space at Dancehouse before?