Thrive – Holiday Intensive

Choreography and Performance Program

11 – 14 April 2023, 10am – 3pm (Tuesday – Friday)

Hosted at Dance Makers Collective Studio, LOT7
7/81-83 Station Rd, Seven Hills, 2147 NSW, Dharug Country

Designed for students in years 7-10

Full workshop: $440
Individual days: $120 per day

The Thrive Holiday Intensive is a comprehensive dance-theatre intensive for high school students, facilitated by professional teaching and performing artists. The program is designed to teach students practical and invaluable skills in composition and performance, delivered in a format that enables them to confidently generate and perform material used by professional choreographers.

Across the four-day intensive, facilitators will deliver daily skills-based workshops in the morning to provide students the tools to generate material. In the afternoons, generated material will be consolidated and built upon each day, so that by day four the students will have created a work to perform at our studios for their teachers, family and friends.

This program has three key objectives:

1. to provide practical composition skills for high school dance students, with links to curriculum (Stage 4 – 6), so that they walk away feeling confident to create their own work;

2. to provide young people with an opportunity to collaborate, express themselves, share ideas and learn from others in a friendly peer environment, with the guidance skilled professional artists, to instil them with confidence and;

3. to provide a platform to develop and practice performance skills, by generating a brand new work together in a semi-professional context where, at the conclusion of the program, they will perform a work to a supportive audience.

The cost of the full workshop is $440 for the 4 day intensive: 10am-3pm each day. It is possible to attend a specific day as a stand-alone workshop at a cost of $120 per day, you can nominate what day/s you wish to attend in the registration form.

The Friday afternoon performance is free for family, friends and teachers to attend, and will also have a Q&A to give the participants and audience an opportunity to reflect on the working process.

This program is registered with Creative Kids, vouchers for this program are redeemable on registration.

ABOUT OUR FACILITATORS

Mitchell Christie

Mitchell Christie is a dancer, creator and educator. Growing up on Dharawal Country (NSW South Coast) he graduated from Newtown High School of the Performing Arts in 2012, where he was the top performing dance student in the HSC. In 2013 Mitchell moved to New York to continue his dance education at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, receiving his BFA in 2017.

Mitchell is a founding member of BIRDHOUSE Collective, a Brooklyn-based company critically acclaimed for their innovative site-specific works and advocacy for accessible art. Whilst in New York he worked for the Cunningham Trust at New York City Center specialising in the restagings of repertoire from the archives.

Mitchell has professionally performed works by Merce Cunningham, Doug Varone, Aszure Barton, William Forsythe, Stijn Celis, Kevin Wynn, Fernando Melo, Ryan Mason, Chuck Wilt, Raven White, Hannah Garner, and Eliza Cooper. In Europe he has studied improvisation methodologies under the direction of Emanuel Gat and David Zambrano.

Katina Olsen

Katina is a Wakka Wakka Kombumerri choreographer / performer and also has Norwegian, German and English Ancestry. She has worked throughout Australia, Canada, UK, USA and Europe with Atamira, Bangarra, Sydney Dance Company, Stalker Theatre, Expressions (now Australasian Dance Collective), Force Majeure, Erth, GUTS, Meryl Tankard, Martin del Amo, Victoria Hunt, Narelle Benjamin, Vicki Van Hout, Liesel Zink and Wesley Enoch.

Katina’s choreographic highlights include Mother’s Cry for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed 2018, movement direction for the play Sunshine Super Girl (Sydney Festival 2021), the ABC series Cleverman 2 and the Malthouse production Walking into the Bigness.