Kevin Jeynes‘s approach to improvised performance has, over the past 25 years, traversed the pleasing plains of cohesion and the slippery slopes of disintegration in movement, sound, song and poetic text. He has performed extensively throughout Australia at venues in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and at Improxchange, Berlin. He was a member of ‘Making Space’, an improvisational research group in Brisbane, from 2003 to 2007, and co-founder of the ‘Froth’ Performance Venue in Brisbane in 2008. After moving to Melbourne in 2012 Kevin curated and regularly performed in the ongoing series ‘un-attache d’, and ‘Up the Ante’ at the Cecil Street Studio and since 2019 the ‘Now Pieces’ Series at Dancehouse. He has produced, with co-host Neil Thomas, a growing archive of 45 Podcast episodes featuring Australian and International performer histories and reflections: ‘The Improvisors Podcast’ on YouTube.

Alice Dixon is a Naarm/Melbourne-based choreographer, dancer, teacher and performer working across contemporary dance, theatre and experimental performance. She has worked with artists and companies including Lucy Guerin, Chunky Move, Opera Australia, Reckless Sleepers (UK), Natalie Cursio, Rawcus, APHIDS, Deanne Butterworth, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Philip Adams (BalletLab), Monica Bill Barnes & Co. (NYC). Recent performance highlights include Lucy Guerin’s retrospective NEWRETRO (ACCA, 2023), NEWRETRO REDUX (2024), international tours of Pendulum, and performing alongside Mish Grigor in Class Act at the Sydney Opera House. Between 2014 – 2024, Alice worked in collaboration with William McBride and Caroline Meaden, together they created eight original works that blended form and genre. Their work has been presented at Dance Massive, Next Wave, FOLA, Dancehouse, Carriageworks, the NGV, and for the Keir Choreographic Award. They received the 2020 Green Room Award for Best Ensemble (Dance) and a Fellowship in 2022 from the late Chloe Munro. In 2024, they were Directors in Residence at Lucy Guerin Inc. and recipients of a bespoke residency at The Australian Ballet Centre. Alice’s solo practice has been supported through national and international residencies and major arts funding bodies.

Janette Hoe is a Melbourne-based dance artist whose work spans movement, materiality, gesture, and image. She investigates how identity shifts through place and time, and explores the role of ritual in facilitating transformation. She is curious about the potential of dance as open dialogue across cultures. With over three decades of experience in site-specific performance, her practice is grounded in Butoh and a fusion of Eastern and Western somatic improvisation. Drawing from her Malaysian-Chinese-Indonesian heritage, she engages the body as a living archive of experience, memory, and change. Janette collaborates across disciplines and presents performances in public spaces, galleries, and natural environments—expanding where and how dance can be encountered. She is currently developing Kueh Lapis, a long-term autobiographical project that examines the ageing body at significant thresholds in a woman’s life, delving into themes of unpredictability, vulnerability, and belonging.

Sunny Kim is a vocalist and composer whose work spans improvisation, composition, and intercultural collaboration. Born in South Korea and based in Australia, she is known for her expressive voice, extended vocal techniques, and ability to move fluidly across genres and traditions. Her performances have featured at major festivals and venues across Europe, North America, and Asia. She has released six albums as a leader, including Liminal Silence (2023), described by DownBeat Magazine as “deeply spiritual… otherworldly.” Four of her recordings have been nominated for Best Jazz Album at the Korean Music Awards. In recent years, she received the 2024 Music Victoria Award for Best Experimental Work and the 2023 APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Performance of the Year. Sunny leads Ensemble Ochaye, a collective of diasporic women artists, and is a member of the ARIA-nominated Hand to Earth project. Her work continues to explore voice as a site of connection, memory, and transformation.

Reuben Macdougall Di Manno (they/he) is an emerging artist, working on Wurundjeri land, with a particular interest in improvisation. Reuben has a Bachelor of Creative Arts and is a member the Youth Dance Makers Initiative Advisory Committee and one of the facilitators of On The Table at Dancehouse. Reuben and the word ‘practice’ are old foes, and they still engage in regular skirmishes, but Reuben has recently been thinking deeply about attention – as performer and audience member. They are interested in how the act of live movement generation narrows and focuses attention, and at the moment grappling with the questions “why perform improvisation?”, and “where can rigour be found in the rehearsal of improvisation?”. Reuben is a huge process nerd whose movement and written works often end up accidentally being about choreography or rehearsal. Elements of play and duration have been recurring recently.

Born and based in Naarm, Jacqui Maida (they/them) has been tending to a twenty-two year long relationship with dance and movement. As an innate improviser, they find fascination in creative gameplay, choreography, tangible imaginary tasks and structured improvisations. Recently Jacqui’s practice manifests in a blend of contemporary dance education, solo and group improvisations, facilitating youth dance practice, writing about personal experience with dance, and regularly attending movement presentations across Naarm. Currently in the role of Executive Assistant with Yellow Wheel, they assist the organisation with rehearsal direction, classes, pastoral care and administration responsibilities. Jacqui has been an artist in residence at QL2 (Ngunnawal Land/Canberra), Fling Physical Theatre (Land of the Yuin-Monaro Nations/Bega) and Mixed Zoning (Naarm/Melbourne), all for the development of their improvisation framework presently titled: The Lettuce, The Book and The Lighting Desk.

As a performer and choreographer John Utans has worked with numerous companies and independent projects including:
Out of Bounds / Lucy Guerin Inc. A short film presented at the BOLD Festival Canberra and Scotland Dance Live Festival. Before returning to Australia permanently in 2020, John created works for; Motion Works Hong Kong, idance Festival Hong Kong, Hong Kong Ballet Company, Milwaukee Ballet Company, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. He has also performed with and created for: Australian Contemporary Dance Company, Human Veins Dance Theatre, Danceworks, Australian Dance Theatre, Queensland Ballet, Expressions Dance Company, Leigh Warren & Dancers, and the West Australian Ballet. John has taught and choreographed for tertiary dance institutions including Rusden, Victorian College of the Arts, Queensland University of Technology, Adelaide Centre of Performing Arts, and the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts. John also creates video / installation works, and is currently choreographing and teaching at local dance studios.

Andrew Byrne is a composer and arts programmer whose music explores logical systems and process-based procedures. Living in New York for two decades, he immersed himself in the American experimental-minimalist scene, which has had a profound impact on his music. Ideas such as cellular automata (ANTS), tiling rhythmic canons (Book of Heptad Canons, Zoom In), Henry Cowell’s Rhythmicon and spirals (Forty-Eight, Spiral Studies), and polyrhythmic progressions (Fans, Grids, Tapping) can be found in his recent pieces. Currently, he serves as a musical co-director of Astra Music and runs The Eleventh Hour Theatre, a performance space in Fitzroy.