SPACE GRANTS JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026

CHLOE CHIGNELL

Chloe Chignell, SUN CUT, 2026, Critical Path, photo by Anna Kucera Photography.

SUN CUT: a lover’s dictionary

SUN CUT: a lover’s dictionary is a lexicon of 366 gestures that attempts to embody the 366 entries in Lesbian Peoples: Materials for a Dictionary written by Monique Wittig and Sandie Zeig (1979). In an act of speculative reanimation SUN CUT is an anticipatory document remembering a future yet to arrive. The work unfurls word by word, body by body. Each iteration of the performance progresses through the dictionary: gathering bodies, gestures, dances. It resists linguistic fixity in order to embrace language as a site of transformation, refusal, and reinvention. Inverting the status of printed material in archival practices SUN CUT asks how the body can be both a site and means of preservation.

Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary is a speculative dictionary that dismantles patriarchal language to posit a world of lesbian relation. Through fragmented definitions and poetic inventions, it reframes language as a site of resistance. Its entries range from definitions of everyday terms to elaborate accounts of mythical events, political movements and cultural practices. The book itself is a queer critique of linguistic authority and its role in enforcing dominant ideologies. Wittig and Zeig subvert the dictionary’s normal function, as a tool of mastery and control, and reshape it into a generative field where language destabilises its own conditions of use. Building on these foundations, SUNCUT approaches Lesbian Peoples not simply as a book but as a practice—a framework for reorganising the body through language.

For this iteration of SUN CUT, Chloe is collaborating with composer Mara Schwerdtfeger.

This work is supported by Critical Path Sydney, Artspace Sydney, Dancehouse Melbourne, GC De Maalbeek, n22 Brussels, Kunstendecreet, Cité des arts, Paris. This work has been presented at Pride Museum, MIMA, Brussels, Summer University, Performing Arts Forum, St Erme, France and PACT Zollverein, Essen.

RHIANNON NEWTON

Rhiannon Newton, Long Sentences, Carriageworks, Commissioned by Performance Space for Liveworks 2025, Photo: Lucy Parakhina

THE PRESENCE TENSE

The Presence Tense is a phrase that came up when I was doing some writing in the studio after dancing recently. It captures my conceptual and choreographic concerns in this moment. How does dance help us to tune into and work with all the different more-than-human things that are active and enabling a given situation? While in the Research Room I am revisiting and working with a bunch of recent studio writing from this emerging practice and while in the Drill I’m continuing to work with some of the scores for collective solo and group action.

http://rhiannonnewton.com/

AMELIA JEAN O’LEARY

Amelia Jean O’Leary, CODED, 2024, Queer Development Program Performance, Image by Joseph Mayers.

GENERATION WTF

Generation WTF is a dance work where narrative is constructed through physical action, rhythm, and accumulation. The piece balances structured choreography with live decision-making to shape meaning in real time.

https://ameliajeanolearydance.cargo.site/

JOSHUA DI MATTINA-BEVEN

Joshua Di Mattina-Beven in the Research Room, 2025

BROKEN NOTES: NOTES ON BREAKTHROUGHS BY DEBORAH MAY

Broken Notes traces the production of dance film ‘Breakthroughs’ by Deborah May, reflecting on each dancer’s unique approach to practice. The 3-channel film included performances from Henrietta Baird, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, Martin del Amo, Rhiannon Newton and Rosalind Crisp. Less a descriptive account or instructive interpretation; the text compiles notes, marginalia and stray insights from the underside of artistic production.

https://joshuadimattinabeven.cargo.site/

ANGELA HAMILTON

Angela Hamilton with Ginger Hobbs, Kate Merrick, Claudia Hurley, Olivia Hadley, Sarah Saad, Emma Dunstan, Molly Robinson, Chrysalis, 2026, Sydney, photo courtesy of the artist.

CHRYSALIS

Chrysalis is a durational dance-theatre installation exploring the feminine through collective embodiment. The work deconstructs social, ritual, and psychic conditioning imposed on the feminine, moving through containment, erasure, and rage toward the reclamation of sovereign, cellular knowing. Through spatial extensions- costume and prop as architecture- Chrysalis manipulates scale and dimension, creating ghostly echoes of presence. These elements act as both constraint and portal, revealing the forces that shape feminine existence while pointing to what lives beneath them: a divinity that precedes construct. The work unfolds as a meditative descent, inviting audiences to participate bodily, sensing the feminine as a primordial force rather than a concept.

https://www.instagram.com/angelahamilton_creative/

https://www.instagram.com/twistedelementco.official/

LINDA LUKE

Linda Luke, Flower of the Season Residency, Los Angles, USA, 2010. Photo: Oguri.

DANCING WITH IMAGES: A SYMPHONY OF SENSATION AND IMAGINATION 

“…if the image does not determine an abundance – an explosion – of unusual images, then there is no imagination. There is only perception”
                                                                              – Bachelard 1988, Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement

Our five senses are like antennae reaching out, seeking, communing and connecting the inside and outside of our body-being. Our imaginations are rich with infinite images. Images that swirl through light and shadow, time and space. Swooshing in, birthed into being, embodied for an instant, only to disappear again and be usurped by another image. Other times, an image is gently held over sustained periods of time, allowing it to grow, morph, proliferate itself into other images. The Body Weather practice employs images as an integral part of developing and dancing choreography. My Critical Path residency will be a deep dive into this process to (re)discover the power of specific images that fuel the dancing. I am particularly inspired by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard who wrote extensively about how poets used very specific images in their prose to galvanise the reader’s imagination into a kind of reverie. Since dancers are poets of ‘embodiment-over-time’, I am curious as to how can I utilise  images that enflame the imagination, not only for the dancer but for those who are witnessing?

This project will contribute in part to my overarching project titled The Temple of Quietude, a performance work in (slow) development, that is concerned with cultivating space to honour the Quiet, a balm for the collective nervous system in our tumultuous geo-political times.

www.lindaluke.com.au

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Chloe Chignell, performance of SUN CUT: a lover’s dictionary, with sound composition by Mara Schwerdtfeger, The Drill Hall, Critical Path, photo by Anna Kučera Photography.

IMAGE ID: Photograph of a performer’s face and torso. They are arching back, eyes are closed, hands are clasped together in front of their chest.