Inspire: Dance Educators’ Professional Learning Program
Ausdance VIC, Ngioka Bunda-Heath & Joel Bray
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Ngioka Bunda-Heath (2024). Photo by Nick Robertson.
Get inspired and learn with choreographers Ngioka Bunda-Heath and Joel Bray
In a 90-minute artist-led workshop, gain valuable insights into the recent works, processes, and dance-making skills of local choreographers Ngioka Bunda-Heath and Joel Bray.
Designed to inspire primary and secondary educators teaching dance, this program offers a unique opportunity for peer-to-peer collaboration and to engage in discipline-based discussions with a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island dance.
Each individual workshop: Foundation – Level 6; Level 7 – 10; and VCE VET Dance, can be attended in-person or via an interactive online session tailored to suit regional and remote educators.
All participants will receive a recording of the workshop, curriculum-aligned worksheets, and lesson plans that provide practical strategies for integrating learnings into the classroom, plus the BIG HEART Education Resource.
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Ngioka Bunda-Heath is Wakka Wakka, Ngugi from Queensland; and Birrpai from New South Wales. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, as the first Aboriginal woman in dance.
Ngioka received the Hutchinson Indigenous Fellowship and Residency, the Chloe Munro AO/Lucy Guerin Inc Independent Artist fellowship, and the Brisbane Powerhouse Wandima Fellowship. She works for Bangarra Dance Theatre in “Rekindling” their youth education program; and is the First Peoples Partnership Coordinator at Chunky Move.
Ngioka has performed works by Mariaa Randall, Sarah Aiken and Rebecca Jensen, Amrita Hepi and Lucy Guerin Inc. Internationally, she’s participated in dance conferences, festivals, and residencies in New Caledonia, France, Canada, America, and Japan.
Ngioka’s choreographic work includes Blood Quantum (2019), Birrpai (2021) awarded Dance Best Duo/Ensemble at the Greenroom Awards, Bridge (2022) and Footprints (2022).
Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri man and Artistic Director of Joel Bray Dance. Joel danced in Europe with Kolben Dance, FRESCO Dance Company, Roy Assaf and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor, and in Australia with CHUNKY MOVE.
Joel’s intimate dance-theatre encounters in unorthodox spaces spring from his Wiradjuri heritage, and use humour to engage audiences in rituals about sex, history, trauma and healing. His experimental work challenges white audience expectations of Aboriginal performance and blur the colonial genres.
His works Biladurang (2017), Dharawungara (CHUNKY MOVE, 2018), Daddy (Yirramboi Festival 2019), Considerable Sexual License (Yirramboi 2021), I Liked It, BUT (2021) and Garabari (2022) have toured to the Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin, Midsumma, Auckland, LiveWorks and Dance Massive Festivals, and to the Arts Centre Melbourne and Canberra Theatre Centre. Joel’s seven-channel video installation called Giraru Galing Ganhagirri (The Wind Will Bring the Rain) was presented at the National Gallery of Australia, and Storage Unit (2023) was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Joel was the 2019 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow, a 2020 Sydney Dance Company New Breed choreographer and the 2021-22 inaugural CHUNKY MOVE Choreographer-in-Residence, and a member of the Melbourne Fringe Board.
Presented by Ausdance VIC in partnership with Dancehouse.
Ausdance VIC acknowledges the support of the Department of Education, Victoria, through the Strategic Partnerships Program.