Projects

Echoes is a triple bill of dance by Future Makers, with choreography by Eliza Cooper, Rhiannon Newtown and Ella Watson-Heath. On March 21 & 22 at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta.

Wolverine, by Emma Harrison, is a highly physical work exploring critical notions of gender, power and the pervasiveness of feminine archetypes in human stories. Premiering in Sydney Festival 2024!

Big Dance 2.0 is a smorgasbord of big ideas in tiny morsels, co-curated, created and performed by the next generation of dance leaders in Sydney, to celebrate DMC’s 10 year anniversary!

Woman’s Work, made by Anya McKee and Katina Olsen, is an evolving work for the real and digital world. Site-specific and adaptable, the work integrates a kaleidoscope of image, movement and sound including dance-film, live dance performance, and moving video portraits of Australian women.

An immersive dance hall meets dance theatre performance, The Rivoli is a tribute to the iconic dance halls across Australia that were a celebration of social life before social media. A hit at Sydney Festival 2020, this joyous experience brings town halls to life and communities together. Touring in 2022 and 2023.

The world moves fast, even when a crisis locks you down, and it’s easy to get swept up in the tidal wave. Iso-somatic Sessions is a series of short meditations led by some of Australia’s best movement practitioners, designed to be taken with headphones on, in your own time, in the comfort of your own home.

Home Bodies sees a variety of dance makers creating under conditions of extreme isolation, short bursts of dance to enliven their neighbourhoods. This project commissioned 25 artists from across NSW and Victoria to perform short dance works made to uplift people in communities of lockdown. Artists hail from a range of dance disciplines, age, gender and identities performing works on balconies, in yards, parks, playgrounds and on street corners for unexpectant audiences, enlivening places with live performance as an antidote to isolation.

For this production, Dance Makers Collective sought advice from their dads, on how to make dance. ‘Dad dancing’ is much derided but ask a dancer’s father, “when is it ok to dance?” or “why bother dancing?” and the answers are not what you’d expect. Enter a world of secret solo dance practice, gender bending, philosophising and joyful experimentation. As contemporary dancers take their artform for a walk back through their family history, they investigate the cultural relevance of dance and its timeless ability to nurture collective experience.

Shortlisted for the 2017 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance.

The collective take a look at dance through the camera lens. Each 1 minute webisode shows the dancer exploring a unique environment with a peculiar object used as a costume. Choreographed to an eclectic soundscape composed by Timothy Constable, WEBISODES brings the dance to your desktop in strange and surprising scenes.

Ten dance artists present nine new and exciting short works – explosive dance in tiny bursts. Featuring a live dance and film work about boxing people in; a solo dancer orbiting a flautist and animator; and a group performance by ten dancers taking charge of their voices. Choreographers, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, lighting and set designers team up to transform the theatre space into a constantly evolving visual landscape where anything can happen.

Converge/\Diverge is a series of collaborative works by ceramicist Holly Macdonald and DMC member Rosslyn Wythes. The works compare and contrast dance and ceramics in multiple ways, starting with the material properties of the body and clay and their relationship to time and space. This collaboration is underpinned by a shared interest in compositional strategies, abstraction and non-verbal modes of communication. Their research has been shaped by contemporary theories of materiality, perception, self and togetherness.

A spin-off from DMC’s much-loved show DADS, Dancing with Lolo and Papa is a warm-hearted, feel-good short dance-theatre work that uses choreography, recorded conversations and music to explore the role dance plays in ordinary people’s lives, through a patrilineal lens. Directed by Anya McKee.

This film is about a father and daughter relationship, Miri a contemporary dancer and Alan a retired furniture removalist. The film explores each of their relationships to music and dance and how it has helped them process depression, in varying levels, in their own lives. The film was created as a spin off project from DADS the live show and premiered on the Sydney Opera House’s online channel in 2020. Directed by Anya McKee, featuring Miranda Wheen and her father Alan.

The Space Between is the culmination of a deep investigation by DMC members Marnie and Melanie Palomares into the practice of yin yoga. This investigation lies in the subtle, nuanced movement experienced internally within moments of stillness. What happens when we begin to move from this heightened state rather than keeping still and being neutral observers?

A solo, a duet, a trio. Safe Hands, Between Two and Zero and Sketch – three works by Dance Makers Collective artists Miranda Wheen, Matt Cornell and Carl Sciberras. This triple bill is a deeper investigation of the artists’ premiere works in Big Dance in Small Chunks, no longer bite-sized pieces but solid mouthfuls of dance!

‘So far sonar’ is a new performance work created by Patricia Wood, with sound artist Alexandra Spence in collaboration with Future Makers.  Premiered at The Granville Centre Gallery, Sunday 11 December 2022.

Pressing play on movement after an uncomfortable pause, Resurgence is Future Makers’ revival project. Featuring two newly commissioned works by critically acclaimed and award-winning artists Jasmin Sheppard and Kristina Chan, and a third co-devised work by the Future Makers themselves, Resurgence brings together three vital voices in an exploratory world of dance, investigating ideas and issues critical to today.

Take a walk in Parramatta Park, the heartland of the Barramatta people, and uncover a collection of hidden dances. Choreographed by ten of Sydney’s best dance makers, and performed by the next generation, DMC presents In Situ.

Future Makers presents Correspondence, a site-specific performance created by multidisciplinary artist Nadia Odlum at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, playfully exploring the Kaldor Public Art Projects archives in new and experimental ways.