Katina Olsen is the selected artist for our 2 week Residency for First Nations Australian artist at Mirramu. This is collaboration between Mirramu and Critical Path.
Land / Astronomy and the human body: Australia / Poland collaboration.
With this residency Katina will centre her research around new movement vocabulary finding through the narrative of her own Kombumerri family cosmology story. From Yugambeh country, I tells the story of Jabreen the creator who turned two Picanninnies (young women) into the night sky (the Moon, Rainbow and Stars) when they didn’t return his Boomerang to him.
“…the stars are the camp fires of our ancestors”…
Katina Olsen is a descendant from the Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri people in Queensland and also has Norwegian, German and English Ancestry. Katina’s choreographic interests lie in the fusions of her Indigenous cultural dance and story with contemporary dance, puppetry, film and analogue photography, theatre, moving sculpture and installation. She holds a BFA (Dance) from Queensland University of Technology and a Diploma in Dance from Queensland Dance School of Excellence. Her recent choreographic highlights include movement direction assisting Wayne Blair for a segment from the ABC TV series Cleverman 2 and choreography for the theatre production Walking into the Bigness directed by Wayne Blair and Chris Mead, Malthouse Theatre 2014, choreographing and collaborating with Dance Makers Collective (DMC) on DADS directed by Miranda Wheen and her own work Instar as part of DMC’s premiere work Big Dance in Small Chunks at Parramatta Riverside, 2013.
In 2011 Katina received a danceWEB scholarship at ImPulsTanz Vienna and in 2014 she received an Australia Council JUMP Mentorship with Philip Channells in disability inclusive dance, choreographic practice and community arts in Norway/Australia and is also a Group JUMP Mentorship recipient of the same year as part of Dance Makers Collective with Michelle Silby, Ausdance NSW.
Katina Olsen. Photo by Aleksandra Borys