Photograph of three dancers in a rounded shape staring at the same point. They wear dark clothes and are photographed in front of a dark grey wall with their shadows enlarged behind.

Opportunities

RESEARCH ROOM RESIDENTS JUNE-DECEMBER 2025

Announcing our Research Room recipients for June–December 2025

Research Room Residencies give artists an opportunity to use the Research Room without any predetermined outcomes.  

We are excited to announce our recipients for June to December 2025: Annalouise Paul, Eric Avery, Sabrina Muszynski, Daniela Zambrano, Sarah Kalule, Phaedra Brown with Jaslyn Boughton & Jacinta Mullen, Avalon Ormiston with Bianca Yeung, Lee-Anne Litton, Grace White, Madeleine Backen, Cassidy McDermott Smith, Alana Yee.

ANNALOUISE PAUL

Image of a flamenco dancer dancing in a small pool of light in an otherwise dark space, facing a reflection of herself.

Annalouise Paul, photo: Tristan Baker.

Self Portrait

Annalouise Paul’s residency is in partnership with the Sydney Jewish Museum.

This new solo work explores convivencia, the co-existence of multiple cultural affinities in the single self. The work is grounded in Annalouise’s Sephardi (Spanish-Jewish) ancestry and contemporary-flamenco arts practice. Artistic research at Critical Path begins a long-term phase to uncover the ancestry and spirituality of Sephardi culture and its deep connection embedded in flamenco, through Jewish liturgy, music, rituals, wisdom and lore. Judeo-Spanish and flamenco cultures are inextricably linked and share a history from time of the expulsion of Jews in 1492. The Sydney Jewish Museum will co-host a sharing of the work-in-progress.

https://www.annalouisepaul.com

http://@annalouise.paul

ANNALOUISE PAUL

Annalouise Paul is a choreographer and performer whose work is anchored in cultural and social memory and how we carry stories in our bodies. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre, London and in flamenco dance with key maestros in Spain. Annalouise won an inaugural 2012 Australian Arts in Asia Award in Dance and NSW Premier’s Export Scholarship 2013 for international touring ‘Game on’ in India, a duet for classical Indian tabla and western Contemporary dance. ‘A Late Bloomer’ brought together artists from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand and was presented in Penang in 2023 supported by the Australian High Commission. In March and April 2025, Flamenco for Everybody toured to Western Riverina, SouthWest and Outback NSW supported by Create NSW. The show evolved organically through Covid and brings together dance, live music and storytelling. Annalouise is a first-generation Australian, raised on Gadigal land, where she currently resides.

SABRINA MUSZYNSKI

Photograph of a female figure with her right arm raised upwards and her left arm to the side. Her fingers are grouped together, suggesting stag antlers, and her left foot is raised towards her opposite leg, with her knee turned out. She wears a grey sports crop top, a purple tartan kilt, and brown suit pants. 

Sabrina Muszynski, 2nd Skin, 2023, solo dance performance; Performance Space LIVE DREAMS: MARRIAGES; photo: Matthew Miceli.

2nd Skin (in development) 

How does Highland dancing fit in the past, present and future? Sabrina will embark on a two-week residency to develop 2nd Skin into a full-length work. She will explore the piece’s universal themes, delving into questions such as: What is Highland dancing? How does her past material contribute to this inquiry, and what personal significance does it hold? During the residency, Sabrina will reimagine the opening of the work—using the resonant drone of bagpipes to evoke the Scottish landscape—and consider weaving her grandmother’s story throughout, drawing on lived experience through movement and text. 

SABRINA MUSZYNSKI

Sabrina is an emerging dance artist interested in contemporary and experimental movement. Hailing from Northern NSW, Sabrina moved to Sydney, attending The McDonald College and completing a Bachelor of Dance (Academy of Music and Performing Arts). Drawing from her background as a Scottish Highland dancer, Sabrina integrates her cultural heritage into her artistic exploration, currently investigating the intersection between visceral, contemporary movement and traditional Highland dance forms. Alongside her creative practice, Sabrina holds a Master of Teaching (Secondary) and works as a Dance and Drama teacher at her local high school.

DANIELA ZAMBRANO

An image of four dancers performing inside a small wooden construction that appears to be a shipping crate deconstructed. Two performers have an arm extended, one vertically and one horizontally.

Form & Flow, Daniela Zambrano, photograph by Alejandro Carriel, 2025.

Form & Flow

With the Research Room Residency, I want to revisit visual material and further explore the theme of migration — something I carry personally, culturally, and politically. I plan to interview people with lived experiences of displacement, allowing their stories to influence the structure and energy of the work. I also aim to continue developing the music and dramaturgy in close collaboration with my team.

www.plonovadance.com

DANIELLA ZAMBRANO

Daniela Zambrano is a Colombian-born Australian choreographer and performer. Her choreography blends contemporary dance with aspects of urban and latin styles, focusing on themes of identity, migration and human connection. In 2025, she was awarded First Place at DUELS, presented by FORM Dance Projects, for her duet Form & Flow: Dueto, which she later presented in a full season at Adelaide Fringe with support from Arts Unlimited and a residency at Critical Path. Recent works include Pulse (2024), featuring live percussion, and Displaced (2022), a dance film created in collaboration with the UNHCR. Daniela’s choreography has been showcased internationally, including at the Hong Kong International Choreography Festival. In 2023, she was selected for Puzzle Work with Anton Lachky in Belgium, where she further developed her skills in improvisation and composition. She began her career with the National Ballet of Colombia and holds a degree from the Superior Academy of Arts in Bogotá. She is the founder of Plonova Dance.

SARAH KALULE

Photograph of a dancer kneeling and looking over the shoulder. Red bubble wrap is draped over the shoulder and partially covers the face; the light from an adjacent window pours over the dancer’s back.

Sarah Kalule, Experimental Choreographic Lab Program, Performance Space and Critical Path, photo: Liz Ham.

 

In the Research Room, Sarah deepens her choreographic exploration of Black presence in performance and image-making. Her work engages themes of deceleration and the aesthetics of “just being” as modes to subvert performance expectations. Through body, material, site and place, she carves space for Black subjectivity, femininity and thought.

SARAH KALULE

Sarah Kalule explores choreography, literature and experimental performance. With a strong interest in contemporary art theory, her current practice delves into her diasporic histories, theatrical jazz and presenting the body in space through body imagery. Her portfolio includes notable productions, recently, DOUBLE ACT (Brand X, Create NSW, City of Sydney 2024), Bubbled Up – In Development (Full Circle & PACT 2025), Infinity Bias (WAH Company 2024), Encounter (Four Winds Festival 2019, Sydney Festival 2020, Sydney Opera House 2022, Bleach Festival 2023), Radical Transparency (WAH Company, Form Dance Projects, City of Sydney 2022), and Home Bodies: “GOT YOUR BIKE?” (Dance Makers Collective 2021). Additionally, Sarah has been honoured with residencies and awards, including Steps on Broadway NYC (SSNYC Program 2022), March Dance Artist Residency (March Dance & PYT Fairfield 2023), The Flying Nun Residency (Brand X 2024), The Experimental Choreographic Lab Program (Performance Space & Critical Path 2025), her Bachelor of Arts (Distinction) majoring in Theatre and Performance Studies & Art History and Theory, and awareded The Arts, Design & Architecture Dean’s List for Academic Excellence (University of New South Wales). Sarah recently presented her solo work, Fancy Jazz Dance (Brand X & Create NSW) and she is currently in development for Bodies Hold Histories (PYT Fairfield & The MARCS Institute). 

 

PHAEDRA BROWN, JASLYN BOUGHTON & JACINTA MULLEN

Three people side by side in a studio with grey Tarkett and a white curtain background. One laying on their back propping themself up on their elbows, one seated, one lying on their belly with their head raised. Their mouths are wide open.

Phaedra Brown, Jacinta Mullen and Jaslyn Boughton, Crocodile, Rock: 2024, Space Residency; Lot 7; Supported by Dance Makers Collective; rehearsal screenshot.

Crocodile, Rock

Crocodile, Rock is an attempt to understand and embody ecological, geological and other processes in nature. Trying, and sometimes failing, to embody the intelligence, resilience, vast scale and regenerative nature of the Earth. By projecting our emotional responses onto the natural environment, we hope to uncover the benefit or damage caused when humans fit themselves into systems that we should naturally be a part of, but have strayed from.

Thus far this project has drawn inspiration from stories in nature, and in the Research Room we will be spending time collecting and collating these stories to find those most poignant to our project. We will also spend time creating text and video that will be used in the creation of a performance.

@phaedrabrownie

@jaslyn_bb

@jatzdratz

PHAEDRA BROWN, JASLYN BOUGHTON & JACINTA MULLEN

Phaedra Brown, Jaslyn Boughton and Jacinta Mullen are independent dancers and choreographers. They have been collaborating for the last two years through Dance Maker’s Collective’s ‘Future Makers’ program and ‘Young Folks’ emerging artists working group. 

 

AVALON ORMISTON WITH BIANCA YEUNG

A woman looks into the camera with a confused expression. Hands around her head pull at her hair and distort her face. In the background the world rushes by.

Bianca Yeung, BiPolar Express, 2025, Promotional photograph: Jonathan Adrian.

BiPolar Express

Space Grant in partnership with MARCS Artscience Lab & Research Room Residency 2025.

BiPolar Express is a cross-medium collaboration between writer Bianca Yeung, dancer/choreographer Avalon Ormiston, and director Isabella Milkovitsch, blending dance and theatre to explore the lived experience of bipolar disorder. During our Critical Path residency, we will develop our work’s choreographic language via focused research with a small ensemble, refining the work’s physical vocabulary and deepening our psychological inquiry. Collaborating with producer Phaedra Brown and performers Grace White, Layla Meadows, Tom Evans, and Lisa Davidson, we’ll bring this work to life in preparation for its premiere at Sydney Fringe Festival this September.

This project is supported by the Australian Cultural Fund and is being presented in partnership with Flight Path Theatre and Sydney Fringe Festival.

@avalonormiston

@bianca.yeung

@phaedrabrownie

AVALON ORMISTON & BIANCA YEUNG

Avalon Ormiston (she/her) is an emerging artist from Meanjin/Brisbane and a graduate of Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year (2022). In 2024, she was awarded the Ian Potter Cultural Trust’s Emerging Artist Grant, supporting her performance and research in Berlin. Avalon recently completed a Bachelor of Health Science (Human Movement) at the University of Sydney. She is currently an apprentice with Stephanie Lake Company whilst also performing with Opera Australia in their current season of Carmen. Avalon also collaborates with Young Folk, an emerging artist collective co-founded with BiPolar Express artists Bianca Yeung and Phaedra Brown.

Bianca Yeung (she/her) is an emerging multidisciplinary artist and published writer. She is an alumnus of Dance Makers Collective’s Future Makers program and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Neuroscience from the University of Sydney. She currently works as a notetaker in Writers Rooms at renowned film and television companies across Sydney.

 

LEE-ANNE LITTON

An image of a group of ten dancers performing in colourful clothes. Many of the dancers are in contact with each other and one in the forefront of the space is balancing in a headstand.

Desencuentro by Lee-Anne Litton and Alejandro Rolandi with Sydney Dance Company PPY cohort 2023, Photo: Wendell Teodoro

A Series of Experiments

A Series of Experiments is a five-part movement class and choreographic research project led by Lee-Anne Litton. This project offers a space to explore compatible practices through embodied inquiry. Guided physical explorations rooted in Contact Improvisation, somatic awareness, and ensemble thinking, the project will investigate how resonance and coherence arise through contrast, and how divergence can become a source of connection and composition. Framing the practice of attuning across difference, this class asks: how does choreography emerge when we lead with listening?

@leeanne_leeanne

LEE-ANNE LITTON

Lee-Anne Litton is a multidisciplinary performance maker and physical theatre artist based on Wonnarua Country (NSW), originally from Mandurah, WA. With a foundation in elite gymnastics and over 15 years in the performing arts, her work traverses the poetic edges of dance, circus, and physical theatre. Her creative world is shaped by embodied research in Contact Improvisation and a fascination with the threshold between aerial performance and dance theatre. As a choreographer, aerialist, and director, she has created and performed works of all scales across the globe. A sought-after teacher and collaborator, she works with the next generation of performers training at Sydney Dance Company – PPY, NAISDA Dance College, AMPA, and NHS Creative and Performing Arts.

 

GRACE WHITE

Photograph of three dancers in a rounded shape staring at the same point. They wear dark clothes and are photographed in front of a dark grey wall with their shadows enlarged behind.

Bianca Yeung, Layla Meadows and Ashleigh Veitch, Mud Monsters choreographed by Grace White, 2024, contemporary dance; ReadyMade Works Inc; photo: Nat Cartney.

Mud Monsters

Mud Monsters is a contemporary dance and theatre work which subverts the femme fatale archetype by demonstrating its power in assertion, its capacity for scaring people, its ability to seduce, its gruesome sexuality which reclaims the power previously taken by the male gaze, its power in embracing the ugly, and, ultimately, its tenderness in its delayering and disarming. This work is a reclamation of power, an embodiment of what it is to be gritty, unapologetic, unashamed, and unafraid.

Mud Monsters is being created in collaboration with dancers Bianca Yeung, Avalon Ormiston, Layla Meadows and Ashleigh Veitch.

@gracewhhite

GRACE WHITE

Grace is a Sydney-based contemporary dance artist who is fascinated by how movement has the potential to incite social change and touch hearts, with particular interests in ecological philosophy, feminism and gender studies, and mindful embodiment. Key works Grace has performed in thus far, include All In by Dance Makers Collective (2025, Sydney Festival), Move FM by the Future Makers for Sydney Fringe Festival (2024), Chants de Marriage by Meryl Tankard (2022, Perth), A Surrender to Small Humanness by Ben Wright (2023, Berlin), and in Sydney’s VIVID Festival with Unite Play Perform (2023). Grace performed and collaborated with Brisbane-based Phluxus2 Dance Collective from 2020-2023. Grace co-produced, -choreographed and performed her first full-length independent dance work, Ode to the Earth, with her collaborator Scotia Taylor, in August 2024. Grace is a member of Young Folks, an emerging artist working ensemble that seeks to support and uplift the artists creatively and beyond.

 

MADELEINE BACKEN

An image of a dancer in motion with a sense of abandonment, their head tilted back and hair falling out behind them. They are lit by by warm theatrical lighting.

Madeleine Backen, Optimal Stopping.

Is this a test?

The unpacking of self and the many elements that lie within. An exploration of the interplay between all these parts.

A solo work with so many working titles it’s hard to fix it with one. The continuation of integrating and unearthing everything that is yet to be explored in this solo project, with a focus on self practice and time to play with ideas, allowing the body and mind to be free to unpack and explore.

MADELEINE BACKEN

Deep lover of all forms of movement, freelancing artist, Madeleine Backen lives and creates in Sydney, on Gadigal land. Madeleine’s initial contemporary dance training began during her time at Austi Dance and Physical Theatre where she had the opportunity to work with a wide range of diverse, primarily European based choreographer’s. In the last five years of Madeleine’s life as an emerging artist and maker she has performed nationally and internationally with companies and project based groups including Stalker Theatre, Dance Makers Collective, Proper Motion, DirtyFeet and FORM Dance Projects. More recently Madeleine participated in the annual Implustanz ALTAS choreographic program held in Vienna, Austria, allowing her the opportunity to begin deepening her own choreographic voice and ever-evolving dance practice.

 

ALANA YEE

Photograph of a woman doing a headstand wearing a black bodysuit and stripper shoes. Behind her is another performer in a sitting position and a musician standing behind a plinth playing with an electronic soundboard, both are also in underwear. In the background is a video projection of the scene and audience are sitting around the edge of the room watching.

Alana Yee, Virginia Kennard, Marika Pratley, Doom Box Ecstatica, 2021, Experimental dance/Performance art; Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand; Performance Art Week Aotearoa; Meanwhile Gallery; Photo: Yoon Young Lee.

Destruction Lust

An interdisciplinary research collaboration exploring themes of queer somatic methodologies and embodiment, ‘DIY lo-fi’ art making, collective consciousness and Pleasure Activism. Working with artists Virginia Kennard and Gideon Payten-Griffiths, we will spend time drinking tea and researching through a series of dialogues, shared storytelling, documenting and recording our experiences in the way of DIY zine making and potentially recorded video and sound work. Cultivating an intuitive, pleasure, rest and digest driven process, we hope to develop and activate a vision for a sequel work (working title: ‘Destruction Lust’) to a previous show titled ‘Doom Box Ecstatica’.

@megapashaction

@sampleartists

ALANA YEE

Alana Yee is an interdisciplinary dance artist originally from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and is second generation Chinese. With a lo-fi DIY approach, Alana’s creative practice emphasises the intersection of identity, pleasure activism, and community engagement. Alana has made and performed many of their own works as well as collaborated with various artists across multiple platforms and events in NZ, London, Berlin, Sydney and most recently Vancouver BC. Noted events where their work has been featured include Wellington Fringe Festival, NZ, Experimental Dance Week Aotearoa dance festival, NZ, Queer Pavilion (Auckland Pride Festival), NZ, and PAWA (Performance Art Week Aotearoa) performance art festival, NZ. They are the founding member of dance art group Mega Pash Action and the curator of roaming performance art platform S.A.M.P.L.E. (Some Artists Making Performance Laboratory Experiments).

 

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Bianca Yeung, Layla Meadows and Ashleigh Veitch, Mud Monsters, 2024, contemporary dance; ReadyMade Works Inc; photo: Nat Cartney. ID: Photograph of three dancers in a rounded shape staring at the same point. They wear dark clothes and are photographed in front of a dark grey wall with their shadows enlarged behind.

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