SHARED PRACTICE SESSIONS
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Register HERE!
Cost: Free!
2024
Wednesday 10th April - Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal and Ria Soemardjo
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
Register HERE!
2024
Wednesday 31st Jan - Jill Crovisier
When: Wednesday, 6pm
Cost: Free!
Shared Practice
ReadyMade Works is very happy to announce two new events in our program that take the place of the Shared Practice sessions.
What Are You Doing? is a studio-based shared practice session where artists share processes and ways of working in the studio. It is not quite a class, not quite a choreographic workshop, a session where ways of making dance and practising dance are opened up as a community resource. It will take place the first Wednesday of every month.
Wednesday 10th April - Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal and Ria Soemardjo
When - 10am - 12pm
Cost: Free!
Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal and Ria Soemardjo warmly invite anybody interested in movement, voice, contemporary performance to gain insight into the world building of their new work, Ngayomi/Shelter. Arriving and warming up with movement resonance and interlocking rhythm practices. Then exploring their unique storytelling approach incorporating craft-animism sculptures in creating intimate performance rituals.
Biographies:
Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal is a performer, choreographer and creative collaborator. Born in Darkinjung Country her Javanese ancestry directly descends from Yogyakarta’s first Sultan, Java’s Borobudur temple and equally Australian Scottish Viking convict-settler. Her unique dance language is forged in classical ballet, jazz, modern, Javanese court arts, Bali temple ritual, eco-somatic improvisation and creative collaboration with First Nations Australian dance artists. Awarded High Distinction for a Master of Choreography Research at VCA Melbourne
University (2010) her entrancing intercultural transdisciplinary work has been created and performed in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
Newtown High of the Performing Arts Dux (Sydney 1995), Bachelor Dance Honours
(University of Florida USA 2000) and Dharmasiswa Scholar (Yogyakarta University of the Arts, Indonesia 2004) all support 30 years of award-winning touring and international dance-culture-embodiment studies and teaching. Performance history embraces live arts, working with Movement Research NYC, Miami Dance Futures, Australian Choreographic Centre, The Bodycartography Project, Mirramu
Dance Company, ImpulsTanz DanceWeb, PAF, Victorian Opera, Chunky Move, Indonesia Contemporary Art Network, Critical Path and NORPA.
An experienced mentor with Arts Northern Rivers, Outback Theatre for Young People, Beyond Empathy and Sprung!! and co-directs Angourie Dance Youth Project. Multimedia dance works presented in theatres, galleries, museums, video, public and wild spaces include touring productions Opal Vapour (2012), Enfold (2016) and 6/7 Empty (2010). Her current major work in development with Kirk Page is ‘Smoke’, a trans-indigenous intercultural collaboration. www.jadedewi.com
Ria Soemardjo is a Melbourne based musician with a passion for collaborations across diverse genres and artforms. Her distinct, haunting vocal style and musicality reflects her Australian/Javanese cultural heritage and a deep appreciation for the timbres, rhythmic complexity and ceremonial association of Balinese and Javanese gamelan traditions. She has studied Central and West Javanese vocal repertoire and is highly respected in the world music scene and Australian Indonesian community for her performances with gamelan ensembles around Australia.
Dance work compositions receiving recognition include Ros Warby’s ‘Tower Suites’ (2012 Green Room Award with cellist Helen Mountfort), Enfold (2016) and Opal Vapour (2013) with dancer/choreographer Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal.
In 2019 together with director/writer Sandra Fiona Long and Bandung Mainteater, Ria created music and vocal scores for ‘Hades Fading’ - a bi-lingual multimedia theatre work (Bandung 2019, AsiaTOPA Festival 2020).
Past Sessions 2024:
Saturday 30th March - Max Revel
ReadyMade Works is running a special Easter weekend session of What Are You Doing? with dancer Max Revell, currently in Australia performing with the Akram Khan Company in Jungle Book Reimagined.
The session is focused on improvisation puzzles and concepts that are derived from the dance style popping. Using a variety of techniques within traditional contemporary practices and the illusionary dance forms participants will learn how to improvise freely using these simple structures correctly.
Growing up in Cornwall, Max began training in Plymouth, taking breaking and popping classes with Street Factory from age nine, later returning there to teach. As a teenager he travelled across the UK competing in battles, and worked with several theatre companies before joining Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds. In 2019 he won the BBC Young Dancer competition, graduating NSCD in 2020 he joined postgraduate company Verve. He has enjoyed working with The Hiccup Project, Frantic Assembly, Patricia Okenwa, Gary Clarke, Eleanor Sikorski, Susanne Thomas, Dickson Mbi, Tony Adigun, Barnaby Booth, Botis Seva, Caroline Finn, and Matthew Robinson. Max is currently a member of the Akram Khan Company, performing in the world tour of Jungle Book
Reimagined.
Image Credit: courtesy of Max Revell
Wednesday 6th March - CONJAH (Ooshcon and Jahra Wasasala)
ooshcon's bio: Embedded in love and devoted to flow - ooshcon is a Samoan ‘decipher of circles’, who specialises in free-body methodologies. The core belief ‘ina ia sosolo le alofa / so love may flow’ is imbued into ooshcon’s evolving practice and way of being.
ooshcon’s work is grounded and actualised through the forms and philosophies of Waving Dance culture, Krump Dance culture, Animation Dance, Geometric Dance, Breath-work and Character/Entity-building. ooshcon embraces these forms with emotional rigour and innovative theatrical practices in pursuit of ‘formlessness’.
ooshcon is a trusted facilitator throughout his practice and communities. Through his work ooshcon strives to symbolically assist others to journey into new personal depths and build on their own ‘emotional content’.
Jahra's bio: Jahra (Arieta) Wasasala is a Fijian world-builder, movement psychopomp and writer of realms.
Within Viti, they hail from the provinces of Macuata and Ba.
Jahra is geographically based in the relational space in-between one world ending and another world beginning.
Through the eye of 'Oceanic Terror-fi', future-mythos and the genealogy of terror and transmutation, Jahra constantly moves towards being Spirit-led and blood-led in their evolving creative offerings.
As an ‘unreal within a beyond-body’, Jahra centres the dance and voice of the 'beyond-body' as their tool of transmutation, serving as the beginning and returning point for their world-building and world-bending practice. Jahra’s training continues to evolve, currently encompassing Krump, Physical Theatre, Body Control techniques, Butoh study, Waving, Character work and ‘Creature-Conditioning’, which comprises of movement mobility and strength training and non-human movement research. Jahra’s theatre-making and research practice is multi-disciplinary and multi-bodied. Their practice is pantheon-based, grounded in belief and speaks into Indigenous future-mythos, culminating in a genre of ‘Oceanic Terror-fi’. Intuitive yet deliberate, disciplined yet Spirit-led, Jahra’s public practice is known for it’s other-worldly physicality, theatrical immersion and transcendent performance level.
Wednesday 31st Jan - Jill Crovisier
Session: Jill Crovisier will start her shared practice with a gentle warm up using improvisation to guide the participants in space and giving an insight into some of her movement research. The session will then focus on character works methods she is regularly using in her creations. Within a theatrical approach the idea is to share creative tools and give the participants a moment of playful and physical exploration.
Biography: Born in Luxembourg in 1987, the award-winning artist Jill Crovisier works as a dancer, choreographer, video artist, sound creator , pedagogue and artistic director of JC movement production (a company established in 2013 and funded by the Ministry of Culture Luxembourg ). Jill has been travelling the world for 20 years and has taken part in numerous dance festivals, renowned choreographic competitions and collaborated with a large number of companies and institutions. The multidisciplinary artist, who won the Luxembourgish Dance Award in 2019, emphasises authenticity and realism, using dance to communicate stories about life and identity. She places a strong emphasis on creating work that is inclusive and emotionally engaging, even for those who may not be familiar with contemporary dance.
Past Sessions 2023:
Wednesday 17th May - Miranda Wheen
Session description:
Miranda will share a little bit of the choregraphic processes developed by Dance Makers Collective, and currently being honed in its work in development of 'All In'. Over time we have come up with methods of collective making, where the same piece of creative material gets passed between many hands. It's a process of continuing someone else's thinking/ideas/body responses, building upon, redeveloping, reimagining the creative beginnings of another person. It asks each person to make contributions, small or large, and in turn submit to being 'worked on' by another.
Bio:
Miranda Wheen is an independent dancer and choreographer based in Sydney. Her practice, whilst rooted in contemporary dance, spans areas of intercultural collaboration, improvisation, teaching, advocacy and dramaturgy for dance. She is an Associate Artist with Marrugeku and a founding member of Dance Makers Collective, for whom she directed their last two shows Dads and The Rivoli. She regularly collaborates with a range of artists and companies including; Martin Del Amo, Stalker Theatre, Shaun Parker and Company, Ghenoa Gela, Mirramu Dance Company, Julie-Anne Long and the Tsai Jui-Yueh Dance Foundation in Taiwan.
Wednesday 3rd May - Rhiannon Newton
Session description: For What Are You Doing, Rhiannon will lead a warm-up that gets awareness of different systems of the body circulating. She will then share some of the embodied scores and movement practices that underlie her recent/current projects such as Explicit Contents, The Gift of a Warning and Long Sentences. These are scores that in one way or another aim to sensitise one to different material and energetic connections between the body and its more-than-human surroundings. There is the possibility to do some writing in relation to these practices so participants are welcome to bring a notebook.
Bio: Rhiannon is an Australian dancer and choreographer who grew up on Dunghutti land on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. Working from Gadigal land (Sydney), Rhiannon makes contributions to community and culture through choreography, performance, collaboration, teaching, research and curation. Her creative work aims to draw attention to the interconnection of the body and the more-than-human world. She has developed her choreographic practice through residency, research, commission and presentation opportunities throughout Australia, South-East Asia, Europe and North America. Rhiannon's recent projects include Explicit Contents (Dancehouse, Melbourne; INDance, Sydney Dance Company; QL2 Dance, Canberra 2022; Sydney Festival, 2021); A Strange Place (Dance Nucleus, Singapore 2022); The Gift of Warning (New Breed, Carriageworks 2021); Long Sentences (Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki 2019; Live Dreams, Performance Space, Sydney 2020); and We Make Each Other Up (Dancehouse, Melbourne 2018).
Wednesday 19th April - Matthew Day
Session description:Sequencing Sensation, or The Rules of Transformation.We land the space through the back surfaces of our bodies, waves, tides: nothing doing transitional moments. Surrender to no-thing, becoming-corps.Collecting unconscious, against the ground we individuate, push away from, resist. Compression potentiates agential pathways.Negative transference zones activate. We insert the other into ourselves, everything matters, movement remembers. Desire deterritorializes space and time, we move into the void not to overcome but to dissolve and return as rhythm: the Dance.Matthew Day (1979) who was a teenage ballroom dancing champion, studied Dance, Performance Studies and Art History at University of Western Sydney and Victorian College of Arts. In 2016 he completed a masters at DAS Choreography, Amsterdam. Day’s work is characterized by it’s migration across artistic disciplines, cultural contexts and performance formats, and his solo works have been presented in Australia and around Europe. He is interested in the potential of dance and choreography to generate unorthodox relations, and perform new modes of existence. Day often works with duration and repetition approaching the body as a site of infinite potential and choreography as a field of energetic intensity and exchange. Day currently resides and works on Bundjalung Country (Northern Rivers) and is of Irish and Scottish descent.
Wednesday 12th April - Patricia Wood
Trish will share some aspects of her ongoing project Trish + Trisha. This project is loosely based on her fictitious friendship with choreographer, Trisha Brown. Trish will share some of the material and processes she has been developing, in, around, and in response, to some of Trisha Brown's seminal works. In this session we will dance, write and chat about imaginary friends, intellectual property greyness, and speculate about how to dance in the aether.
Patricia Wood is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and performer. Her choreographic research focuses on the embodied practice of transmission, ephemerality and memory, and encompasses radio, text and IRL performances. She grew up in Cairns, Far North Queensland on Yidinji land, and spent a lot of her childhood swimming in various bodies of water, devouring mangoes, and not wearing shoes. She now lives and works on Gadigal land, Sydney, and wears shoes much more often. Patricia has developed a number of works including, So far sonar (2022), Transmission Solo (2019), Dance Pirate Radio – Telepathic Democracy (2018), Trish & Trisha (2016), A Re-Enactment (2015), and 11 Steps (2012). She received a Master of Research from Macquarie University (2016), was a board member for Critical Path (2018-2020), a teaching artist with Sydney Dance Company (2016-current) and managed artist-run space, ReadyMade Works (2017-2019). Her writing has been published in Un Magazine and Critical Dialogues and she is currently working with Dr Amanda Card at Sydney University as a research assistant.
What Were You Thinking? is a new shared practice session at ReadyMade Works where artists can share the thinking and process behind their work. It is an informal discussion led by an artist around the ideas that inform their work. Artists can show work, bring questions, discuss philosophy or whatever feels imperative to them at this time. ReadyMade Works will bring the drinks and nibblies.
Wednesday 31st Jan - Jill Crovisier
When: Wednesday, 6pm
Cost: Free!
Performance: The JCSOUND1 SOLO performance was developed during a research project around sound creation and composition for contemporary dance in 2023. The music as a starting point of the choreographic approach, this work is performed by the choreographer and sound creator herself. It embarks us on a journey where confusing, overexciting and choppy movements confront each other such as a juxtaposition of flashbacks floating between mechanism and fluidity. A moment which creates a desperate quest for recognition highlighted by a touch of comedy and existentialism.
After the performance, the audience will get a chance to ask questions and chat with Jill.
Past Sessions:
Sunday 4th December - Nick Power
Nick Power will share his practice which expands on the vocabulary of street dance to create full-length contemporary works and foster intercultural dialogues and collaborations. The interactive talk will highlight the lineage in his practice from self taught battle b-boy to curator and choreographer, giving an insight into the different stages of his practice as it has unfolded over the past 2 decades.
Nick Power is an Australian B-boy and Choreographer whose work draws on the rituals and culture of hip hop. His practice spans from remote Aboriginal communities to the stages of the most prestigious contemporary dance festivals in Europe and Asia. Crossing complex divides of place, culture, language and form is Nick’s forté. Nick has created 4 full length Independent works: Deejay x Dancer (2022), Two Crews (2020), Between Tiny Cities (2017) and Cypher (2013). Nick was Associate Artist with Stalker Theatre from 2006 - 2013 creating 3 touring works with the company, he was Artistic Director of Platform Hip Hop Festival 2008 - 2012 and Curator of Contemporary Dance at Campbelltown Arts Centre 2016 - 2018
Saturday 12th November - Charemaine Seet
Charemaine Seet will share elements of Sixth Daughter, her ongoing project exploring Teochew opera. She will show videos, do demonstrations and teach movement to participants. Charemaine will discuss her recent research trip to Singapore which was supported by Critical Path.
“Sixth Daughter is a project to delve into the movement vocabulary of the first live performance I had experienced as a child in Malaysia and Singapore.” Charemaine Seet
Charemaine Seet is a dance artist and educator straddling post-modern dance and street dance practice. She has been a principal dancer in companies in London and New York and has collaborated with a range of dance and performance artists including La Ribot, Gilles Jobin and Doug Elkins. She continues to collaborate with Doug Elkins on a variety of film and performance projects.
She was a full time scholarship student with Merce Cunningham in New York. Her own dance school, Seet Dance, teaches a range of styles but is primarily concerned in decentering contemporary dance away from Western aesthetics. She also is currently leading a variety of dance workshops at the Sydney Opera House. Her practice explores intersections of dance as movement, learnings, writings and research that remain true to their original contexts.
Wednesday 27 July - Martin del Amo
Martin says "I’ve always been fascinated with how, traditionally, choreography and improvisation are thought of as being on opposite sides of the spectrum, as far as dance composition is concerned. In my own work, I try to collapse the perceived difference between the two. The aim is to develop pieces that are highly structured and repeatable on one hand, yet elastic enough to never be exactly the sam on the other. For Shared Practice, I will discuss some of the strategies I employ to try and achieve this. The focus will be on my most recent solo work Mirage (shared with Miranda Wheen) and ensemble piece Champions (2017)."
Martin del Amo is a Sydney-based choreographer and dancer with more than 25 years of professional experience. He started out as solo artist, acclaimed for his full-length solos fusing idiosyncratic movement and intimate storytelling. Over the last decade, Martin has also built a strong reputation as creator of group works and solos for others. He regularly teaches and has extensively worked as mentor, dramaturg, movement consultant and dance writer. Martin’s contributions to the Australian arts sector have been recognised with the prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship (2015) and the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance (2018).
Wednesday 15 June - Emma Saunders
Emma says of her session... " Well, if i'm really honest, i would love a chance just to say hello to Sydney again. Hello!! It's been so long!! and maybe to talk about some of the processes behind making dance work in general, and to share a little of the different kinds of work i've made across scale, site, collaborators, community and function. How i've been influenced by my work with The Fondue Set and how that will never die, leaving Sydney and the effect that has, taking stock once you hit motherhood, broadening my practice so i learn and am relevant and survive and earn enough money to raise a family, how artistic priorities and starting points can shift around from time to time, considering who am i making work for and why, and how dance can be a container for communication, also how difficult it is to keep things simple when confronted with chaos, and how i'm not dead yet - i think i may be just getting started!!"
Emma Saunders is an award winning “formidable” (Realtime, 2010) Australian dance artist who works as a director, choreographer, dancer, educator, dance curator and producer. Over the past 25 years she has honed her practice to develop an interest in the simplicity of dance and the complexity of choreography. Utilising a visceral, instinctive attack, her work is immediate, often working with humour, everyday movement, text, repetition, deconstruction, duration and abstraction. Emma is the founder and director of the WE ARE HERE company, and is one of The Fondue Set. Her very recent work includes: ENCOUNTER SYDNEY at the Sydney Opera House, RADICAL TRANSPARENCY at Parramatta Riverside with Form Dance Projects.
April 20 - Ivey Wawn
Ivey will share some video works and talk through the processes and outcomes so far developed under the banner of an ongoing project titled In Perpetuity.
Ivey Wawn (1990) is a dancer working and living primarily on Gadigal Land (Sydney). She makes performances mainly for live audiences and contributes regularly to the work of other artists from a range of disciplines as a performer and collaborator. She is committed to dance as a potential form of resistance; to social abstraction and commodification, making work about labour, being together, sensation and magic among other things. Such works have taken different forms; from lecture, through video, to live performance and are presented in art galleries, virtual spaces and theatres. She is supported to continue working as an artist by a secondary income in hospitality and continues to study a Bachelor of Political Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney since 2016. Ivey’s work has been supported by Arts House, the Australia Council for the Arts, Critical Path, DirtyFeet, First Draft Gallery, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Liquid Architecture, Next Wave Festival, Performance Space, and Underbelly Arts Festival among other institutions.
March 18 - Lee Serle
Lee will be discussing his solo studio practice and research he undertook during his Sustaining Practice residency. He will show his recent work-in-progress that he presented as part of Lucy Guerin's PIECES season late last year, as well as earlier work that informs his current practice and the work he is creating now. Lee will then facilitate an open discussion around choreographic process.
Lee Serle is a Sydney based choreographer and performer. He graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance in 2003. His work has been presented in France, USA, Colombia, Lebanon and Australia, and he has been commissioned to create new works for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Inc, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Dancenorth, Victorian College of the Arts, and Colombian visual artist Mateo López. Lee has performed in the works of many notable choreographers including; Trisha Brown, Lucy Guerin, Tere O’Connor, Gideon Obarzanek, Shelley Lasica, among many others, and has received Fellowships from Rolex Arts Institute, Australia Council for the Arts (Creative Australia Fellowship) and City of Sydney.
Past Shared Practice Facilitators
2022
IOmer Backley-Astrachan, Alice Tauv, Feras Shaheen, Lizzie Thomson, Tra Mi Dinh, Ko Yamada, Matt Cornell
2021
Ivey Wawn, Lee Serle, Martin del Amo, Victoria Hunt, Lizzie Thomson
2020
Ivey Wawn, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, Rhiannon Newton, Matt Cornell, Nikki Heywood
2019
Bhenji Ra, Brooke Stamp, Thomas Bradley, Victoria Hunt, Jane McKernan, Andrew Morrish, Cass Mortimer-Eipper, Jill Crovisier, Adelina Larsson, Omer Backley-Astrachan, Rhiannon Newton.