About the Speakers

Rheannan Port

Rheannan Port is a Lama Lama, Ayapathu and Kuku Yalanji woman with over 20 years of experience working within Indigenous arts and culture as a dancer, choreographer and educator. She holds a Master of Fine Arts (Dance) with First Class Honours at The University of Melbourne, a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Arts Management at The Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development the University of Melbourne, a Diploma and Certificate in Dance at the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association Inc, (NAISDA). From 2003-2006, Rheannan danced with Bangarra Dance Theatre touring regionally and internationally.  

Rheannan is currently a Lecturer in Dance (Indigenous) at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development with a special interest in Indigenous dance pedagogy.  

Wirastuti Susilaningtyas

Wirastuti Susilaningtyas was born in Surakarta and is a graduate of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Surakarta. She began studying dance at the age of nine at Soeryo Soemirat, Puro Mangkunegaran, marking her entry into the world of performance. In 2003, she joined Eko Supriyanto’s Solo Dance Studio, deepening her dance practice and gaining opportunities to collaborate with renowned national and international directors and choreographers. Her work integrates movement and vocal practices, and she has performed as a dancer, choreographer, and vocalist with artists such as Eko Supriyanto, Suprapto Suryodarmo, Jarot Budi Darsono, Garin Nugroho, Fajar Satriadi, Riyanto, Chen Zi-Zheng, Rama Suprapto, and Gondrong Gunarto. Her notable works include Rendezvous (2017), Dawai Sunyi (2017), The Lady (2018), Hope (2020), and choreography for the Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Asian Para Games. She is currently a member of Ekosdance Company.

Monica Lim

Monica is Narrm-based sound artist and composer interested in new cross-disciplinary genres and forms as well as combinations of new technology with music. Her work has been presented at Arts House, Science Gallery Melbourne, AsiaTOPA, Venice Biennale Architettura, White Night, ArtJog, Liquid Architecture, Melbourne Fringe, Arts Centre Melbourne, Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Sydney Dance Company and WorldPride as well as international symposiums such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH Asia and NIME. She has been nominated for the Creative Australia Inspire Award, Green Room Award and the Music Victoria Best Experimental Artist Award. Monica has completed her PhD at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne in movement-led composition, new technologies and creative AI. She was a 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Grainger Museum and Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio. www.monicalim.online 

Kitana Price

Kitana is a proud Wotjobaluk woman of North-west Victoria who grew up on Kulin lands of the Boon-Wurrung and Woi-Wurrung peoples. Currently in her third year studying in the Bachelor of Fine Arts Dance at the University of Melbourne, Kitana aspires to be a professional contemporary dance artist within the community, creating works and discovering her identity as a First Nations artist.  

As a prominent Koori leader throughout her education, Kitana has been the recipient for a number of scholarships including the Anne Kantor Scholarship (2023-2025), the Renate Kamener Scholarship (2024-2025), and the Ormond College’s Cultural Residential Advisor and Head of Indigenous Committee (2025).

Gracieuse Amah

Gracieuse Amah, widely known as “KWABO” Grace, is a cultural leader, choreographer, and creative director whose work bridges the worlds of arts, community, and compliance. Of French, Beninese, and Togolese heritage, she uses dance and storytelling as powerful tools for healing, education, and social change. A permanent choreographer for Melbourne’s Public Opinion Afro Orchestra, Grace has performed with icons like Ebo Taylor, Femi Kuti, and Fally Ipupa, and choreographed major events including NGV Triennial Extra 2024 and Honour 2025 at Federation Square. 

Founder of KWABO Events and KWABO Festival, Grace champions BIPOC voices through immersive cultural experiences and is a cultural peace broker amplifying the bodies and stories of BIPOC communities. Her latest initiative, the KWABO Art Incubator, a peer-led, multi-artform program running from July 19 to September 21, 2025, nurtures emerging BIPOC talent across dance, singing, spoken word, and photography. 

Ausdance VIC board chair, French entertainment lawyer, and senior privacy advisor, Grace merges creativity with strategy, placing cultural safety and inclusion at the heart of her work. Her legacy is one of empowerment, unity, and movement—welcoming all into the rhythm of change. 

Irihipeti Waretini

A people and practise weaver of multi-dimensional stories, Irihipeti Waretini is a Māori artist, creative director, and decolonial practitioner whose work navigates the intersection of cultural healing, storytelling, and artistic expression. Drawing from Pasifika wayfinding and Māori epistemology, her projects focus on Indigenous ways of knowing, belonging, and remembrance, blending visual art, sound, movement, and ritual. 

Irihipeti’s art explores themes of grief, ancestral connection, and ecological stewardship, with a particular focus on mourning practices and their relationship to the environment. Her bodies of work embrace holistic, cyclical, and relational creative practices that honor both personal and collective histories. She is committed to rematriation, self-determination, and the reclamation of Indigenous cultural sovereignty. Her work is a call to return to the sacred, to heal from colonial trauma, and to reconnect with the land, ancestors, and each other. 

A visual and vocal storyteller, her mediums include contemporary Māori art, whakairo (carving), photography, film, soundscapes, live looping, and taonga pūoro (traditional Māori flute). A community cultural development practitioner, she curates repositories of Indigenous methodologies and experiences through various collaborations, creative ventures, and wellness-based practises—providing tools and spaces of learning for the self-determination of the very communities who have fed and raised her and her daughter Marcelina. 

Jackie Sheppard

Jackie is an inter-disciplinary performing artist, writer, and storyteller whose practice is grounded in dance, performance, embodiment and ritual. They are a workshop facilitator and practice somatic healing. Jackie has experience as a creative provocateur, cultural consultant and university lecturer. They investigate ancestral and intergenerational narratives through somatic inquiry and exploration of embodied ‘remembrance’. Their work is largely focused on cultural reclamation and revitalisation through storytelling. Selected projects include: The Honouring, a dance theatre production with puppetry and projection supported by Arts House; Wild Australia – Men in Chains roving installation; and a short self-choreographed dance ritual performed at ARTJOG in Indonesia through the Victorina College of the Arts. Jackie has received a literary award for their short-written piece, Ashes to Earth, for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards. Their production, The Honouring received a Greenroom Award for ‘Breaking Grounds’, category of Dance. Jackie is currently pursuing a Master of Dance at the Victorina College of the Arts.  

Julie Ann Minaai

Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, Julie Ann Minaai is an international award-winning dancer, choreographer, rehearsal director, teacher and artist of Japanese heritage. She has trained in both the US and UK, and completed her MA in Contemporary Dance from the London Contemporary Dance School. Julie spent 12 years in the UK and was recognised as an Artist of Exceptional Promise by the Arts Council England. She has toured internationally (UK, US, Norway, Israel, China, South Korea, Colombia & Peru) performing, teaching and creating her own works.   

Since moving to Australia in 2021, Julie has worked with Meryl Tankard AO, Elena Kats-Chernin AO, Regis Lansac OAM, Form Dance Project, Adam Blanch, Configuration Company, Bronwyn Kidd, Carol Brown, Monica Lim, Sunny Kim, Bella Waru, Jackie Sheppard, REMUSE Designs, L2R Dance (Mentor for IGNITING LEGENDS 2022), Multicultural Arts Victoria (RESONANCE 2023, Art Souk 2024), The Bowery Theatre & St. Albans Community Centre, Immigration Museum and Japanese art and music elders and communities (Noriko Tadano, Toshi Sakamoto, and Junko Azukawa).   

Julie is currently a Lecturer in Dance at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts (VCA).  Her interdisciplinary practice explores stories of immigration, cultural identity, and ancestral memory through a Japanese diasporic lens, weaving embodied practices of rhythm, music, ritual, and dance.  

Lamine Sonko

Lamine Sonko is a director, composer, researcher, and cultural educator who draws on traditional wisdom to create interdisciplinary, multi-sensory arts experiences, informed by his heritage as a Guéwel (hereditary cultural role) from Senegal, West Africa. As a Guewel, his role is to be a keeper and communicator of history, customs, rituals, and sacred knowledge through music, film, and theatre.  

Sonko’s artistic practice is shaped by a lifetime of embodied cultural learning within his community, beginning in early childhood under the guidance of elders through observation and participation in sacred rituals and ceremonies. As an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Higher Degree Researcher at the Australian National University, he conducts advanced scholarly inquiry into how traditional knowledge systems can be adapted and applied within contemporary artistic frameworks. More about Sonko’s work: https://www.1312.com.au/

Noriko Tadano 

Noriko Tadano is an award-winning, virtuoso master of the Japanese tsugaru shamisen (a 3-string, banjo-like instrument), composer and a traditional Japanese vocalist, who has performed all over the world. Born in Chiba, Japan, she has been playing shamisen since she was 6 years old and performs both as a soloist, as well as in collaborations. Noriko’s ability and drive to cross over between traditional and modern Japanese music has recently seen her perform with renowned world musicians as well as traditional Japanese artists.  
Since moving to Australia in 2004, Noriko has received numerous awards including: Australian Busking Championship (2008) in Mortlake, Victoria with George Kamikawa, Head Judge’s Special Award at the Hirosaki Tsugaru Shamisen World Cup (2009) in Hirosaki, Japan, and finalist for the South Australian Governor’s  Multicultural Award (2021) for her work in promoting multiculturalism in the South Australian community through the arts or cultural activities.  

As a culturally diverse female musician and performer, Noriko seeks out unique collaborations and creative practices that extend well beyond her music into acting and theatre, sound art and composing. She strives to empower and encourage women by making art that inspires and connects while also showcasing the beauty of difference.

Kialea-Nadine Williams 

Kialea-Nadine Williams brings 20 years of professional performance knowledge to her teaching practice. She trained at London’s Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance before joining Phoenix Dance Theatre and Michael Clark Company. Kialea-Nadine Williams was the recipient of the 2007 Best Female Dancer UK, Critics Circle Award for the performance of the acclaimed work Harmonica Breakdown (1938) choreographed by Jane Dudley.   

In 2008, Kialea-Nadine joined Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) under the direction of Garry Stewart. During her time with ADT (2008 – 2012), Kialea-Nadine was an original cast member of Stewart’s G, Be Yourself, Worldhood, and Proximity.   

Since 2012, Kialea-Nadine has been working as an independent dancer, creator, actor, puppeteer and educator, fulfilling mentoring and rehearsal director roles. Selected credits include: Tasdance’s Luminous Flux, Madame: A Story of Joseph Farrugia: Torque Show, Daniel Jaber’s Reassessment & A Dying Swan, Larissa McGowan’s Mortal Condition, Windmill Theatre Company’s Beep, and Lina Limosani Projekts’s The Spinners.   

As an educator, Kialea-Nadine previously worked at Adelaide College of the Arts for five years as a contemporary dance, classical ballet, acrobatic tumbling teacher, choreographer, and rehearsal director in the BA Creative Arts (Dance) course. Kialea-Nadine is currently the Tutor in Dance at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts.