… EVERY BODY CAN DANCE
A new dance festival called Salamanca Moves takes place from 20 September until 1 October in Hobart, Tasmania.
Festival events are happening around the Salamanca precinct, Moonah Arts Centre and surprise pop-up venues over 11 days. The biennial festival is produced by Salamanca Arts Centre.
Embracing dancers and audiences of all ages and all abilities, Salamanca Moves is both a showcase for some of the country’s most acclaimed performers and a community festival offering opportunities to view, create, perform, experiment.
“Salamanca Moves celebrates dance as an art form but also its ability to bring people together,” says Festival curator Kelly Drummond Cawthon. “It’s designed to be inclusive and accessible to all.
“Contemporary dance really is suitable for any body and every body. It’s an expression of who we are and what moves us. That’s the philosophy that underpins the whole festival.”
Salamanca Moves delivers an ambitious and extensive program of free and ticketed dance performances, including the creation of new works and critically acclaimed productions. Dancers of all levels are invited to experiment, and get physical through a series of development dance workshops and performance opportunities led by national and international contemporary dance makers.
The 2016 Movers in Residence include: Cari Ann Shim Sham (USA), Liesel Zink (QLD), Lz
Dunn (VIC), Melinda Smith + Dianne Reid (VIC), Neta Pulvermacher (Israel), Philip Channells (NSW),Sannamaria Kuula (Finland), Ana Degues (Portugal), Liz Aggiss (UK), Julie-Anne Long (NSW), James Batchelor (ACT), Ina Sladic (Croatia)
The festival dance companies include: Dancenorth (from Queensland), and Drill Performance, [in]visible Practice, MADE, Tasdance, Tasmanian Youth Classical Ballet Company, Second Echo Ensemble and Stompin (all from Tasmania).
The festival patron is multi award-winning Melbourne based Tasmanian choreographer, dancer and director Stephanie Lake. In 2014 Stephanie was awarded both the Helpmann Award (A Small Prometheus) and Australian Dance Award (AORTA) for Outstanding Choreography. She also won the Green Room Award for Mix Tape in 2011. Stephanie was awarded a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2013 and the Dame Peggy Van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship in 2012. She has been commissioned by Sydney Dance Company, Chunky Move, Tasdance, Dancenorth among others and her works have toured to France, Germany, Denmark, the UK and Singapore and across Australia.
Funding Partners: Festivals Australia, Tasmanian Regional Arts, City of Hobart and Arts Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government.
The full program is available here in PDF form: www.salamancamoves.com/all-events
Bookings can also be made via Centertainment or via the free events app What’s On In, available for iPhone or Android.
Salamanca Moves trailer (30 seconds): https://youtu.be/6PPZFVK6Tmk
Join the conversation using hashtag #salamancamoves across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
2016 FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS:
Mature Moves: A three-day event celebrating mature dance, and challenging the conventions of aging through dance. Includes a program of performances featuring national and international artists, and workshops and panel conversations led by industry leaders. A Tasmania Performs initiative.
Aeon: From the creative team of Lz Dunn, Lawrence English, Shian Law & Lara Thoms. A participatory sound and movement performance informed by bird flocking and the field of queer ecology. Aeon invites us to refocus our senses and manoeuvre through urban parks, public space, exterior and interior worlds. It is a listening movement – a negotiation of co-navigation through the ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. Produced by Performing Lines and supported by Mobile States, Aon premiered att Arts House in Melbourne in 2015 and this year was part of the World Theatre Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse and Vitalstatistix’s Adhocracy in September.
Rite of Spring: A creative reimagining of a classic. Members of Second Echo Ensemble embark on their boldest project yet – an original devised performance based on Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Through dance, physical theatre and immersive design, they journey deep into the promise of spring. Interiors are revealed; the wishful linings of pockets, secrets stained on petticoats, histories and landscapes tattooed on the hearts. Rite of Spring will be a grand procession with audience and performers travelling together. Co-presented by Tasmanian Theatre Company.
MOV-ies: A celebration of work between the body and the camera. Curated by Cari Ann Shim Sham from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, the program will feature a series of short and feature films with movement as a strong component, presented in interactive and creative screenings.
Re-Works: Too often contemporary dance work is created, premiered and never seen again. How can we created new classics if work is not given a chance to really find itself and grow an audience? This strand provides an opportunity for works be re-created, re-presented, re-lived and shared with new audiences. Featuring outstanding Tasmanian choreographers Glen Murray of [in]visible practice and Wendy Morrow; local legend Neil Cameron and Movers in Residence Julie-Anne Long and Neta Pulvermacher.
Relax The Chimp: is a large-scale interactive dance event aimed to ‘trigger the dance in us all’. Presented by Tasdance in collaboration with Salamanca Arts Centre and Junction Arts Festival.
CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES:
Get Your Dance On: A series of short workshops focusing on learning and making dance. Run by the Movers in Residence, and opened to movers and shakers of all ages and experiences who are ready to try out a few moves and have fun.
Creative intensives: The Festival’s extended workshop series, run over 2-5 days and offer dancers the opportunity to work with leading national and international dance makers including Lz Dunn, Philip Channells, Ana Degues and James Batchelor. Most workshops include preparation for a public performance at the conclusion of the course.
Dance Pathways Program: An opportunity for emerging choreographers from local high school and colleges to share their work and receive feedback from nationally and internationally acclaimed movers and dance teachers.
BYO-V(enue): A series designed to teach movers how to create dance in un-excepted places and to inspire local community groups to create and present their own space activations. The outcome is an interactive and public presentation of pop-up performances within the Salamanca Precinct.
In The Making: Dancers, dance makers community groups, and interdisciplinary performance makers will share their thoughts, experiments, ideas in motions, and creative blockages in a series of performances and conversations that explore how they make work, what works and what doesn’t.
Briony Kidd, Communications and Marketing Salamanca Arts Centre, 77 Salamanca Place, Hobart TAS 7004, Australia
