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.
CHLOE CHIGNELL
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.
RHIANNON NEWTON
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/
AMELIA JEAN O'LEARY
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/
ANGELA HAMILTON
Angela’s practice fuses choreography, design, and social experimentation, engaging both traditional and non-traditional audiences. Her early career spans Australia, the UK, and Europe, with credits including Hack Ballet, The Infinite Bridge (UK), and a commission for Transform Dance Company. She has toured internationally as a performer and creative educator, teaching dance for camera and guest lecturing at institutions such as The Rambert School.
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
LINDA LUKE
Linda has created and toured several solo works over the last 20 years, presenting at Performance Space’s LiveWorks, Melbourne International Dance Festival, Dancehouse, FORM Dance, Campbelltown Arts Centre, MAP Festival (Malaysia), and Flower of the Season (USA). She has also conceived, curated, and co-produced a range of independent dance and performance initiatives, including Platform (De Quincey Co, 2009–2019), Happy Hour (ReadyMade Works, 2016–2025) and CO/MINGLING (Merrigong Theatre, 2025–2026). Linda also danced in numerous wonderful productions with De Quincey Co., from 2005 – 2025.
Linda maintains a vibrant teaching role at the University of Wollongong, where she is also undertaking a Doctorate of Creative Arts. Her research investigates the role of imagination in Body Weather’s image-based choreography.
SUE HEALEY
Siobhan Lynch and Nadiyah Akbar in Sue Healey’s AFTERWORLD, Photo Wendell Teodoro.
AFTERWORLD redux
Sue Healey will begin creating a version of the Sydney Festival work AFTERWORLD with performers Siobhan Lynch and Billy Keohavong and composer Laurence Pike. This new version will be created for alternative spaces with 2 dancers.
SUE HEALEY
LIZ LEA
Liz Lea, Diamond, photo by O&J Wikner Photography.
DIAMOND
Diamond is a new one woman show exploring ageing, resilience and the complexity of womanhood with invisible disabilities.
Diamond celebrates the brilliance that emerges through time – the courage, fragility, and the power that define us as we evolve.
https://www.lizleacreates.com/
https://www.instagram.com/liz19lea/
https://www.facebook.com/liz.lea.18/
LIZ LEA
RYUICHI FUJIMURA
Ryuichi Fujimura’s Finishing Touch, CAAP work-in-progress showing, November 2025 at Carriageworks, Sydney. Photographer: Justin Cueno.
FINISHING TOUCH
Finishing Touch is a dance memoir that explores how memories are stored and reactivated through the body using gestural sequences. This work is being developed in collaboration between Sarah Chase, a Canadian choreographer and Ryuichi Fujimura.
RYUICHI FUJIMURA
Over the past two decades, Ryuichi has collaborated with both emerging and established artists across dance, theatre, opera, site-specific performance, and film. His artistic collaborators include Xavier Le Roy, Alan Schacher, Justin Shoulder, Vicki Van Hout, Cloe Fournier and WeiZen Ho. He has also performed with companies such as Force Majeure, De Quincey Co., Opera Australia, Clockfire Theatre Co. and Sydney Dance Company.
Since beginning his choreographic practice in 2013, Ryuichi has created several performance works, including his critically acclaimed HERE NOW trilogy. In recent years, he has expanded his practice to encompass interdisciplinary collaborations with artists from diverse fields, including Mel O’Callaghan, Laura Turner, Alicia Frankovich, Hamed Sadeghi and Justene Williams.
PHAEDRA BROWN
Phaedra Brown, FLOP, 2026, Drill Hall, Performance Space & Critical Path Experimental Performance Lab, Photo by Lucy Parakhina.
FLOP
Falling flopping loving flailing trying again trying really really hard relentless persistent commitment compounding hope dreaming the effort doing the effort flaws the floor figuring out.
FLOP is a project made to express the physical and psychological labour of trying really, really hard. A love letter to the flop era, it celebrates the joy, devastation and compassion that comes with human effort and failure.
PHAEDRA BROWN
Phaedra has choreographed and performed the works ‘How to Watch People in Cafes’ (Sydney Fringe Dance Hub, 2024), ’Waiting Game’ (March Dance, Melbourne Fringe, 2022) and ‘A Small Spectacle’, (live-streamed for Melbourne Fringe 2020, March Dance 2021).
Recently Phaedra has taken part in the 2026 Experimental Choreographic Lab, supported by Performance Space and Critical Path, and in 2025 she produced and performed in Bianca Yeung’s ‘BiPolar Express’ for Sydney Fringe. Other performance highlights include Rhiannon Newton’s ‘Caresss’ and Ella Watson-Heath’s ‘catandmouse’ (Future Makers ‘Echoes’ season, 2024), and Stephanie Lake’s ‘Colossus’ (2018, 2019).
She holds a BFA Dance (Hons.) from the VCA, and a Graduate Diploma in Cultural Leadership from UNSW.
KAREN KERKHOVEN
Image courtesy of Karen Kerkhoven.
CREATORS OF THE FUTURE
In this intergenerational research project, we will explore ways to imagine the future. We will invite a variety of ages including youth and play with role reversal, experimenting with young people choreographing older people.
https://www.artinmotion.com.au/
https://www.instagram.com/karenkerkhoven/
KAREN KERKHOVEN
Karen Kerkhoven was born in Sydney. Her mother Hilary Cassidy, a fine artist and textile designer, was a strong influence on Kerkhoven’s artistic path, raising her in a creative arts environment influenced by the philosophies of artist Desiderius Orban. At the age of eight Kerkhoven began contemporary dance classes with Jean Dembitza whose personal syllabus was based on the work of German expressionist choreographer Harold Kreutzberg. She also studied the Cecchetti system of classical ballet with Valrene Tweedie in the 1980s and studied acting with Hayes Gordon at the Ensemble Theatre. At the age of seventeen Kerkhoven established a small dance school in Newport, Sydney, where her students included Kate Champion and Phillipa Harpur (Pike). She then taught adult classes for Tanya Pearson and in 1973 was commissioned by Pearson’s Northside Ballet Company to create Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Her early professional performing engagements were with the Pat Gregory Ice Show, the Liza Minelli Show for Channel 9 and the French dance company Oh! La!La! during an Asian tour. In 1979 she worked as a guest artist with One Extra Dance Company – dancing, teaching company classes, and choreographing Speaking of Children and Fantasy in Wonderland. In 1980 she was commissioned by the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre to create Dreamtime to Colin Bights’ original score. In 1982 Kerkhoven established the Contemporary Dance Company, a company of eight dancers which received Australia Council funding to perform in schools in New South Wales. She choreographed for this company until its final performance in 1985 which took place at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and was documented by the ABC. During the 1980s she also taught extensively, including at the Eora Centre for visual and performing arts and Aboriginal studies in Redfern. Kerkhoven has also been involved in numerous collaborative projects with the visual arts, including improvisation performances in gallery spaces. Her work at the Art Gallery of NSW has included performances relating to Kandinsky, Henry Moore and the Impressionists. In 2006 she was artist in residence for the Ashfield Council at Thurning Villa. This residency culminated in Outside the Square, an exploration of choreograhed dance and visual art in which she performed with dancers Chimene Steel Prior and Lisa Herrick. She has received a number of awards and scholarships for her choreography. At the Ballet Australia Choreographic competition she was twice awarded second place (for Getting Clean in 1971 and For Gabrielle in 1973 ) and received an honourable mention for At Least I Tried in 1976. In 1993 she received a scholarship to attend the ‘Choreographer’s Workshop’ at Jacob’s Pillow with Bessie Schonberg. Kerkhoven holds a Master of Arts (Dance) from the University of Western Sydney. She is currently working on explorations with dance and visual art both in Australia and abroad and is a member of the Art In Motion group.
JASMIN SAFADI
Jasmin Safadi. A Passing Into . … 2025. Bidjigal Land of the Eora Nation. Still captured by Kayla Hawkins.
What S/ands Be\ween U|s
What S/ands Be\ween U|s is a Project exploring borders through a geopolitical and emotional lens.
There is endless questioning on whether they divide, unite, protect or serve no purpose. The answer could be everything, none of it or something in between. They steer our life’s pathways, perspectives and patterns of thought about our sense of identity, belonging and our view on other nations and groups of people. They shape our world without us acknowledging it until we meet upon them or listen to people’s stories on how they become barriers, excluding and dangerous. Borders can be geographical, tangible or not, politically motivated, even emotional and spiritual. Some wish they were gone, some hope the opposite.
As the subject is very broad, the work researches through movement and the use of interdisciplinary artistic elements of voice and paper specifically on how borders can affect, even discriminate, one individual while to another they are invisible. In spite of it all and the separation through a line in the earth that determines different fates within our lives, what unites us, and what can dismantle and transcend these borders?
JASMIN SAFADI
FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Angelica Osuji, Every Wild Idea, 2025, The Drill Hall, Critical Path, photo by Anna Kučera Photography.
IMAGE ID: Photograph of a performer. They have their hands on their waist and are smiling.