I dance, make choreography, learn how to teach Klein Technique™, teach Klein Technique™, dance, movement and choreographic practice, write, edit and translate text. I engage a lot of different activities that all emerge from my work and identity as a dancer. 

I am in Berlin, Germany.

My pathway from study into the professional field of dance:

 I graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia in 2013, with a Bachelor of Dance. Back then, there was this pretty incredible grant from the Australia Council for the Arts: $10,000 to fuel one’s work/practice coming out of school. This grant was slashed from government funding the next year, so I was really lucky in my moment. This support was really significant for me as I used it to travel overseas and engage in communities (such as paf, an open residence/community in France), many of which remain embedded in my practice, very dear to me as I have remained based in Europe from that time. I live in Berlin.

Transitioning from training into work was closely connected to some important teachers. Becky Hilton was/is such a teacher for me. At school, she shared so much knowledge that lives and moves (in) me today. Beyond sharing her fantastic embodied knowledge through dance classes and making pieces, she talked about her experiences and relationships with artists and ideas throughout her career and the world. So inspired by Becky (and other great friends and mentors like Brooke Stamp), her energy, thinking, the processes we went through in the studio, and the copious information she generously shared, I paved my own path beyond school by thoroughly researching my curiosities—whose seeds great teachers had planted in my imagination and dreams during school—to then find and experience these interests for myself. I was pretty enthusiastic, passionate, motivated and inspired in that moment, really hungry to experience new environments. 

I was/am also really close with the group of students I went through VCA with: Leah Marojevic, Ellen Davies, Chloe Chignell, Megan Payne, Darcy Wallace and Rachell Bo Clark, many of whom went on to do incredible things with their dancing and choreography and thinking in many shapes and forms, and still do. We shared our transition from school into the world, supporting each others’ directions and dreams and struggles. Our time at school and in the world was imbued with so much love and friendship and solidarity. 

The bit of your journey that’s not mentioned in my bio:

When I left home (Melbourne), I didn’t know that it would be such a significant move. I didn’t know that seven years later I would be so deeply involved with different contexts, collaborators and friends all over the world. I also didn’t know how leaving home would show me how differentiated where I come from is, how that makes Naarm/Melbourne, Australia so important to me on a personal/historical level. I didn’t know how incredible leaving home would be for me, as much as I didn’t know how it would make a lot of things complex and uncomfortable. I am still learning from these paradoxes and how to be present with them. As obvious as it sounds, some of the biggest lessons I’m still learning are: if I am somewhere, I am not somewhere else. If I am doing something, I am not doing something else. If I am spending time and space with others, I am not present in the same material way with those who are not there. 

Advice to graduating self:

• What you need might be right in front of you

• Chill out

• Go inward as much as you reach outward

• Trust yourself

• Making selections can help you

• Don’t work to make everything possible all the time

• Work and life are inextricably entwined. Take care of both. 

• Take care of yourself and trust others (the trustworthy ones) to take care of you too

 Advice to a graduate now: 

• Don’t stick to the formats that exist

• Create the conditions you need for yourself (as much as you can).

• Stick together in finding yourselves

• Don’t stop dancing (for yourself, not just the field, if not for yourself first). 

• Let go of anything that’s not working for you (remember the work-life merge).

• Go to your body for knowledge, inspiration, hope. It knows so much.

One hope for the future of dance:

Dance will keep moving us, touching us and transforming us as it always has, in the way only dance can, resolutely embodied, embedded, present and accountable. Maybe some of these futures won’t be visible in the same ways/temporalities we have known, and maybe some will appear more visible than ever before. I believe dance will keep moving us, and that we will keep moving.