Karlia and Danni are dance artists of European, Mā’ohi and Māori descent, hailing from Norfolk Island, Hitiaurevareva (Pitcairn Island) and Ngāpuhi iwi on the North Island of Aotearoa. Karlia and Danni were raised in so called Australia on the South Coast of NSW on Yuin and Dharawal Country. Both Karlia and Danni’s practice is grounded in the embodiment of listening and honouring the ever-evolving relationality between their bodies their ancestry and the lands and water they grew up on and travel between.

Karlia is a dancer, choreographer and writer with a Masters in Dance from the Victorian College of the Arts. Her practice traverses between the physical and the ancestral, the local and the cosmological, as she aims to converse, unearth and dance alongside the multiplicity of voices, memories and bodies of water that her body is a meeting ground to. Since graduating from WAAPA in 2021 Karlia has worked with companies and artists such as Chunky Move, Joel Bray Dance, New Zealand Dance Company Julie Minaai and Bella Waru. Performing in Joel Bray’s world Premier of Garabari at Arts house and choreographing a short work Oneness on New Zealand Dance Company, apart of the Matariki Hunga Nui program. In 2024 Karlia has received support from Lucy Guerin Inc. Moving forward residency and Australian Dance Theatre’s Tanja Liedtke studio residency to develop a new work TOGETHER in collaboration with pan-indegnous artists Amelia O’Leary, Bella Waru and Danni Cook.

Danni is a freelance dance artist recently graduated from Western Australia Academy of the Performing Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in contemporary dance. In 2022 Danni was selected to study abroad at Purchase Conservatory of Dance in New York. Her time overseas led her to connect and work with varying companies and choreographers, including a restaged performance of ‘Echad Mi Yodea’ by Ohad Naharin in Italy.

Since graduating Danni has worked with various companies and artists, and is soon to embark on a tour with TasDance for Jenni Large’s work ‘Body Body Commodity’. With the support of Lucy Guerin Inc and Australian Dance Theatre’s Tanja Liedtke studio residency, Danni has also been developing a co-led pan indigenous work. Danni’s practice is focussed on the energetic exchange between self, her collaborators, and the land and waters she exists on and travel between. She is interested in using movement as a vessel to interrogate how the form of our body is a manifestation of the land, delving into and listening to internal nuances that inform external aesthetic, place, and the voices of our spirits and ancestors

Kat Tomlinson Gils is a designer and maker whose practice focuses on creating joyful expressions of self. After graduating with Honours from the University of Technology Sydney’s Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textiles, she moved to Naarm to work full time as a textiles designer. Inspired by play and her love for fashion history, her work explores nostalgia with a focus on vibrant colour, personal textiles and hand-crafted details.

Rachael Hobbs is a novel, experimental music composer and sound designer. At the age of 22 she is quite fresh to the industry of composition but has been a performer and song-writer all her life having played her original compositions around Melbourne and internationally. – Montreux Jazz Festival, 2019, Porretta Soul Festival 2019.

Her methodical approach to composition aggravates peculiar abstractions which are the prominent distinctions of Rachael’s work. Her background in songwriting rings clear through expression of emotion, through both unconventional sound design, and accomplished instrumentation.

She possesses a particular proclivity to dance composition and marries movement and sound with vigilant and tasteful instinct.

We would like to thank our collaborators Amelia O’Leary and Bella Waru for their support and guidance in the development of this work.