NATIONAL DANCE FORUM 2015 BIOGRAPHIES FACILITATOR Andrew Morrish Andrew Morrish began performance improvisational work, part time, with Al Wunder's 'Theatre of the Ordinary' in Melbourne in 1982. In 1987 he co-founded the improvisational movement theatre duet 'Trotman and Morrish' with Peter Trotman. Together they performed 14 self-funded seasons in Melbourne in addition to numerous other one-off performances (including the Greenmill Dance Festival, Melbourne in 1994, 1995 and 1997). They also performed in the United States, most notably in the New York Improvisation Festival in 1995 and 1997. In 1999 they performed in 'Antistatic' at the Performance Space (Sydney) and in 'Dancers are Space-eaters' at PICA (Perth). In 2000 he moved to Sydney and based his teaching and solo performance practice at Omeo Dance Studio. In 2002 he relocated his work in Europe and now teaches and performs extensively in France, Nederlands, Germany, Switzerland and the U.K. He is also often invited to work with individual and small groups of performers to mentor their improvisational development. Artists with whom he has worked in this way include Samir Akika Company, (Munster- dance/theatre), Ulrike Quade (Amsterdam-puppetry), Mischa van Dullerman, Anat Geiger and Klaus Jurgen (Amsterdam-theatre/dance), Antje Pfundner (Hamburg-dance), All Audreys (Hobart- theatre, Jens Biedermann (Lucerne theatre/dance) and Bronja Novac (Goteberg) with Suzanne Martin (Berlin) and Katherine Eriksson(San Francisco) in dance and performance. He has developed, and continues, long term collaborative relationships with Tony Osborne (improvisation) in Sydney, Crosby McCloy (writing and performance improvisation), Sten Rudstrom (performance improvisation) in Berlin, and Martha Rodezno (improvisation) in Paris. He has been a Research Associate at University of Huddersfield since February 2006, and was appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow in December 2008. In Huddersfield he regularly collaborates with John Britton and Hilary Elliot on a variety of research and performance projects relating to improvisational performance. In October 2006 he facilitated a research project on improvisation for 14 artists and a team of 4 researchers in 'Precipice' at the Australian Choreographic Centre, Canberra. In collaboration with Peter Trotman and Tony Osborne he also facilitated Precipice in 2007. In 2008 he facilitated the Huddersfield Improvisation Project (HIP), 3 days of directed reflective practice for experienced improvisers, which led to a research report completed in 2009. (Extracts soon to be published on his site). He has been a member of Neil Thomas' Urban Dream Capsule, an extended 'live-in' installation in store windows, which initially appeared in the 1996 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Between 1996 and 2006 it ran 14 times in Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Oceania. http://www.andrewmorrish.com/ CO-FACILITATORS Annette Carmichael Annette is an Australian dance artist and creative producer who specialises in regional cultural development. Between 2009 – 2013 Annette was the State’s Regional Contemporary Dance Facilitator for Ausdance WA creating the ground-breaking ‘Future Landings’ model for animating regional communities through dance. Annette won the 2011 West Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community/Regional Dance and was shortlisted twice in 2013. In 2012 Annette was short-listed for an Australian Dance Award. Annette has created numerous multi-art performance works that use contemporary dance at their core but also include theatre, writing, textiles and installation. She is particularly known for working with regional communities to create works that investigate contemporary people’s connections with Australian history particularly in the areas of solastalgia, settler guilt and ‘unspoken’ stories. In 2014 Annette performed her solo show Solace+Yearning at the Regional Arts Australia national summit. In January 2015 Annette will premiere her latest work My War? created with young people for the centenary of Anzac. As an Arts Manager/Consultant Annette has worked with West Australian Ballet, STEPS Youth Dance Company, Buzz Dance Theatre, STRUT Dance Inc., Festival of Perth, Women’s Art Library (London) and Denmark Arts. Annette is a graduate of West Australian Academy of Performance Arts (BA Arts Man. 1996) and is a member of Virtual Dust, an online choreographic project. www.annettecarmichael.com.au Ashley Dyer Ashley Dyer is a performance maker, producer and workshop facilitator based in Melbourne, Australia. Although not a classically trained a dancer, singer, actor, visual artist or writer, over the past ten years he has developed his extensively in these areas often borrowing from these traditions. He works very slowly. His practice consists largely of asking questions and solving personal riddles in order to discover better questions and new riddles. His work is heavily influenced by artists, groups and performances that emerged out of Sydney's Performance Space between 1985 and 2005. Some of these artist and their work he knows personally and others he knows through hearsay, mythology and oral tradition. Some of his most notable public work has involved working with materials, falling objects and smoke, and presenting, choreographing and composing them in relation to a dancer's and the audience's bodies. His two most well known works And then something fell on my head... (Next Wave Festival 2010) and Life Support (Dance Massive 2013) received significant peer and industry acclaim. More recently, he was a collaborating artist on the Greenroom Award nominated Nothing to See Here... (Dispersal) and Flatland; an adaptation in dance that won four of the seven BOH Cameronian awards it was nominated for in Malaysia; including best choreography. This year he is working on four projects; The Chat a theatre performance featuring ex-offenders about the parole process to premiere at La Boite Theatre; Tremor a dance performance/installation about the our bodies and the planet coupe with the effects of trauma; SK!N a new dance collaboration with Malaysian based artists about human trafficking and the plight of asylum seekers; And two new works in the series titled Nothing to See Here that will be presented at PICA and Salamanca Arts Centre. He has made work for, and performed in works in, a diverse range of contexts both nationally and internationally; sometimes as a dancer, other times as a performer, other times as a dramaturg, musician or collaborating artist. He was also employed as an Associate Producer at Next Wave Festival 2012 and founded and program managed Erskineville's Tiny Stadiums Festival in its first two years. He was awarded a Creative Australia Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2013. Fiona Winning Fiona Winning is the Head of Programming at Sydney Festival. Prior to that she worked as an independent writer and producer working in contemporary arts, across theatre, dance and visual cultures. She curated The Australian Theatre Forum in 2011 and worked with Bundanon Trust as Co-convenor of Siteworks - an ongoing conversation between artists, environmentalists and scholars. She also collaborated on the development of intercultural and interdisciplinary projects by independent practitioners. From 1999-2008 Fiona was Director of Performance Space, a national contemporary arts hub based in Sydney. During this time she collaborated with artists and communities to conceive and produce events in theatres, galleries and public spaces as well as developing a range of training and residency programs. This included producing and co-curating six Time_Place_Space interdisciplinary arts laboratories (with Teresa Crea, Julianne Pierce and Sarah Miller); collaborating with peers to set up Mobile States - Touring Contemporary Performance Australia; and programming intercultural exchanges with national and international artists and companies. KEYNOTES Lemi Ponifasio Theatre artist Lemi Ponifasio founded MAU in Auckland in 1995, a collaboration of communities and artists from all over the world. MAU is a Samoan word that means a declaration to the truth of a matter or revolution as an effort to transform. In his artistic universe, Ponifasio orients the modern individual towards other dimensions of consciousness by way of the decelerated rhythm of his strict aesthetic, making use of striking images, movement and dynamic interplay of light and darkness. A pioneer at the international frontier of dance and theatre art, his theatre vision transcends the barriers between genres and cultures and transmits the universal power of art. Lemi Ponifasio presents his productions in such places as the Avignon Festival, BAM, Ruhrtriennale, Edinburgh International Festival, Theatre de la Ville Paris, London's Southbank, Holland Festival, Luminato Festival, Vienna Festival and Berliner Festspiele. I AM, Ponifasio’s most recent work, premiered at the Avignon Festival 2014 followed by seasons at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Ruhrtriennale, Germany, and I AM MAPUCHE for Festival Santiago a Mil, Chile. His other creations include Birds With Skymirrors responding to the disappearing Pacific Islands, homelands to most of his dancers and devastated by climate change; Tempest: Without A Body, concerning our collective paralysis in the face of truth, symbolized by increased and unlawful use of state power post 9/11; Le Savali: Berlin confronting the imperial City of Berlin with its own communities, the young generation