8 recent Australian screendance works from the 2025 Dance (Lens) Official Selection including housebound meditations of the self, dance through multiple time dimensions, public displays of endurance and rebellious healing, intimate reshapings of identity, and rituals for an off-planet deity.

therapist, client, boy, girl, man… (2025), by Mischa Baka

therapist, client, boy, girl, man… blends an ensemble of characters into a single body’s performance. Are these characters a game for someone, for themselves? Is the therapist’s insight useful, or just another role? Perhaps only a dancer’s body can move between these identities with a light touch, uncommitted, yet full of possibility.

** contains course language and adult themes

Writer, Director Mischa Baka
Choreographer, Dancer Benjamin Hancock

3 (2023), by Yuiko Masukawa

Three dancers, one continuous shot in public space.

Commissioned by The Australian Ballet and Telstra

Director, Choreographer, Editor Yuiko Masukawa
Dancers Louie Wisby, Benjamin Hurley and Geoffrey Watson
Music Alisdair Macindoe
Camera Takeshi Kondo
Cinematographer Sam McGilp

Downtime (2025), by The Samaya Wives

A short film that brings dance into the beautifully mundane moments of a relationship at home. Inside the walls of a house, an intimate portrait of two men is painted as they navigate the ups, downs, ins and outs of love and relationshiping.

Supported by Melt Queer festival of the arts & Arts Queensland.

Featuring Micheal Smith and Damian Meredith inside a North Queensland home
Created the Samaya Wives
Song Jean du Voyage ( Mantra )

GA1A (2025), by Joyce Liu

GA1A takes place in an abandoned world, following the birth of a sub-species of cyber-humans. They perform in ritualistic synchronicity in their newly colonised environment, communicating to an off-planet deity to summon their Mother.

Direction/Choreography Joyce Liu
Dancers Alner Borce, Florence Kurniawan, Reika Ozeki, Beatrice Chiew, Lulu Mckenzie and Kaiyang Zhang
Music Michael Stratford Hutch
DP/Gaffer/Edit Christos Katra
Production Company Kikin Creative
Assist Hugo Long
BTS/Assist Claire Quiason
HMUA Jac Trika and Sara Rakhmetova
Costume Phoebe Nguyen and Joyce Liu

Common (2024), by Jade Schmutter

Common explores the complexities of intimate relationships and visually plays with how we coexist, create, and shape the spaces we inhabit. The film blurs the line between people and their environment, with each individual showing up in space like a piece of furniture, adding to and shaping the atmosphere of their shared world. This piece was performed by Project One dancers; Amelia Vu, Jade Schmutter, Rob Aspinall, and Wendy Nguyen.

Sponsored by Project One Creative

I Move To Process My Feelings (2025), by Rachel Coulson and Harrison Ritchie-Jones

A rebellious form of healing, I Move To Process My Feelings, captures strange, rigorous happenings within the urban environments of North Melbourne (Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country). The dance meets the pavement as an act of interrogating our habits with people and the constructed world around us.