Moving and shaking at Sydney Festival 2008

Sydney Festival will be moving and shaking in 2008 with Australia Council funding bringing some of Australia's best contemporary dance to the stage.

An allocation of $200,000 from the Australia Council will enable Sydney Festival to build on its already strong commitment to Australian contemporary dance.

The Movers & Shakers program, comprising eight unique and dramatic dance events, will headline the festival's highly successful ‘About an Hour’ series. It is a prized opportunity for the Australia Council to grow audiences for and awareness of the quality and diversity of Australian contemporary dance.

The Movers & Shakers program includes:

Gideon Obarzanek's Mortal Engine

Performed by Chunky Move, Mortal Engine will continue Gideon Obarzanek's investigation into the visual possibilities of new technologies. Mortal Engine is a new dance-video-laser performance using movement responsive video projections to portray an ever-shifting, shimmering world, where the limits of the body are an illusion.

Stephen Page's Kin

Stephen Page will bring together three generations of his relatives in Kin, a contemporary story of family, community and history. Told through the eyes of seven young Aboriginal boys aged between nine and 14, Kin explores the contrasts between their ancestral history and urban upbringing, and their beliefs about the world and their place in it as young Aboriginal men.

Lucy Guerin's Aether

Combining the talents of motion graphics designer Michaela French, composer Gerald Mair and Lucy Guerin and company, Aether is fast, furious and delicate, showing the struggle of five dancers to transcend the confusion of contemporary communication and make direct, human connections.

Shaun Parker's This Show Is About People

A daring music-theatre-dance collaboration between choreographer and counter-tenor Shaun Parker and musicians Mara and Llew Kiek This Show Is About People sees high impact dance layered with intricate gestures and a sensitive array of live music. This Show Is About People shows how our sense of fun and capacity for joy depends as much on other people as on ourselves.

Kate Champion's The Age I'm In

Together with Force Majeure and a range of Australians aged between eight and 80 this dance-theatre piece offers a revealing portrait of Australia. The startlingly personal responses to a range of emotive issues create an intimate snapshot that uses honesty to puncture public facades.

Tanja Liedtke's construct

The final work of the late choreographer Tanja Liedtke, construct is candid, complex and clever. construct exposes the dark underside of building a dream. Through the dual construction of a house and a relationship, construct fixes a wicked gaze on ambition and the connections between creating a dream, a relationship and a life.

Katheryn Dunn, Narelle Benjamin and Frances Rings' Into

These two intimate works feature one talented dancer, Katheryn Dunn. Belonging is a heartfelt hymn to the timeless power intuition and kinship from one of Bangarra Dance Theatres' acclaimed resident choreographers, Frances Rings.

Figment is Narelle Benjamin's fearless tackling of the fractured mental landscape of schizophrenia, inspired by her sister's experiences.

Media enquiries

Victoria Milner
Email: v.milner@ozco.gov.au
Mob: 0410 322 431