5 recent Australian screendance works from the 2025 Dance (Lens) Official Selection including poetic dances pondering legacy, ancestry, existential wounding, regrowth and eco philosophy.

Na Trí Céilithe (2025), by Rhys Ryan

Na Trí Céilithe revisits the annual Gaelic concerts organised by the Irish diaspora in Melbourne during the early twentieth century. Traditional song, dance and music featured prominently at these events – each potent signifiers of Irishness through which cultural identity could be articulated and expanded. Responding to the absence of archival footage, the film reinterprets the dances performed at these céilithe, combining traditional forms with contemporary visions of Irishness.

This film is the outcome of a Russell Beedles Performing Arts Fellowship, awarded by the State Library of Victoria.

Director, Choreographer and Performer Rhys Ryan
Assistant Director Arabella Frahn-Starkie
Cinematographer James Lauritz
Composer and Sound Designer Robbie Divine
Uilleann Pipes Matthew Horsley
Costume Designer Jessamine Moffett
Lighting Designer John Collopy
Creative Adviser Piaera Lauritz

Patsy at 80: A Portrait in four movements (2025), by Jo Pollitt

A close reading of 1992-1994 Ecofeminism Course Readers compiled by scholar Patsy Hallen, involved being onsite at her property in South Yunderup on Noongar Country, Western Australia. Over the course of a day we captured Patsy, now in her 80’s, in four movements, Stacking, Rowing, Coiling, Repeating. These four movements are embodied and choreographic snapshots of relational and environmental engagements. Patsy at 80, poetically plays with the power of performance and the moving/dancing body in offering accumulating, sustained, practical tactics for social and environmental transformation in the 21st Century.

This film was supported by the Academic Staff Association of Edith Cowan University, Solidarity Research Fund as part of Pollitt and Mauro-Flude’s Contemporary Ecofeminist Education (CEE)

Director Jo Pollitt
Videography and Edit Emma Fishwick
Choreography Jo Pollitt with Patsy Hallen
Performer Patsy Hallen

SEED (2024), by Sue Hawksley

SEED is a gentle meditation on regrowth and recovery. A still, lying figure begins to move, her dance leaving traces which bloom into a multibodied form.

Father Father (2024), by Jozsef Trefeli

Dancer József Trefeli, named after his grandfather whom he never met, embarks on a deeply personal journey. His father, a Hungarian immigrant, fled to Australia in 1956 following the Hungarian Revolution. Drawn by the echoes of his heritage, József seeks to reconnect with the language and culture of his ancestors. Guided by his father’s voice and cherished stories, he ventures to his ancestral homeland, uncovering a legacy interwoven with history and memory.

This project is supported by the Republic and Canton of Geneva.

I Am Many (2025), by LEE KIEN FEI

Filmed in Melaka (Malaysia), this is a dance set in the ancient Dutch quarters of Old Melaka and evokes the sense of being lost and longing, memory and an existential wound. Dance in its origin has a meaning of the body quivering or trembling as if the nerves hold the memory within a zone of trance and is manifested to the dancer and viewer.

In I am many, dancer and choreographer, Tony Yap delved into a spectrum of trance states to recall the numerous poignant times of his life when he was lost. Faye is the emphatic observer. He films and edits as an archeologist of the poetic and emotional narrative.

This project is supported by Roger Soong (The Baboon House, Melaka)