And, ACTION!

Dancehouse’s biennial festival of dance on screen returns 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 is 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 features 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 features 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 sees 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 offer four workshops to build skills and strategies to create screendance works. Dance and film artists are welcome, and workshops are offered at all experience levels.

A Dance (Lens) Festival Pass grants access to all 7 screening sessions and the full festival on demand through Vimeo.

The Dance (Lens) Festival in 2023 is supported by the Besen Family Foundation.

DANCE (LENS) FESTIVAL SCREENING SCHEDULE

Thursday 13 July
6:30pm – Official Selection #1
7:30pm – Material Moves curated by Siobhan Murphy

Friday 14 July
6:30pm – Official Selection #2
7:30pm – Sound Into Sight curated by Gitta Wigro

Saturday 15 July
6.30pm – Official Selection #3
7.30pm – Out of Line curated by Feras Shaheen
8.30pm – Special Screening: Graveyard Riddim & Dance (Lens) Closing Party

Dance (Lens) Workshops
Four workshops by Siobhan Murphy and Cobie Orger