ANNOUNCING OUR INAUGURAL CHOREOGRAPHIC RESEARCHER, MELBOURNE-BASED EMERGING CHOREOGRAPHER AND DANCER RACHAEL WISBY
Commencing in 2020, Temperance Hall introduces the position of Choreographer Researcher. This position accommodates the individual artist with a central studio at Temperance Hall to facilitate research and collaboration specific to their choreographic disciplines.
Our inaugural Choreographic Researcher, Rachael Wisby, was the winner of Phillip Adams Melbourne University Facility of Fine Arts & Music Mentorship Award in 2018. The position provides Rachael freedom to pursue in-depth research work or begin the first stage of long conversations towards the realisation of a performance. Rachael will receive in-kind studio space, technical and logistic support, mentoring from the Temperance Hall artistic and administrative team, and will have the opportunity to include her research practice in Temperance Hall’s programming.
Statement from Rachael Wisby:
The research I will undertake in this role will be a development and accumulation of the last three years of my practice, which looks into patriarchal hierarchies of bodies and landscapes and how we can enrich our understanding of the former; utilizing its under- represented abilities for thinking and acting independently of the brain, to imagine it as a tool for the preservation of the latter. In interacting with the context of the research, outcomes will respond to and unpack the requirements of performance, presentation and showings that convolute the form.
The position will motivate my own investment of time and resources into facilitating research projects and outcomes, by providing access to space and the ability to collaborate with other artists under a flexible, self-directed structure.
about rachael wisby
Rachael Wisby is a movement artist who lives and works in Naarm/Birrarung. As a 2018 graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, she has worked with many artists including Phoebe Robinson, Natalie Abbott, Gideon Orbarzanek, Rebecca Jensen, Sarah Aiken and Lee Serle. She travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore on a Melbourne University Global Atelier (2017) and to Paris to attend Camping workshops with Myriam Gourfink at The Centre Nationale De La Danse (2018). Upon graduating, Rachael was awarded the Phillip Adams Mentorship and the Orloff Family Charitable Trust award.
In 2019 Rachael performed in Phillip Adams BalletLab’s Glory, Jo Lloyd’s Garden Dance and worked on developments/performances with artists such as Walter Dundervill, Geoffrey Watson and Luigi Vescio. Rachael also has been developing and presenting choreographic work since 2017, presenting Site-Not-Specific for Melbourne Fringe and Scene Change, See Change, Sea Change. At the end of 2018 she also presented her work, The Peace This Piece is Violent. In 2019 she was co-commissioned with collaborator Nasim Patel to create The Curtain Drops (The Jig Is Up) for the University of Melbourne, and has been involved in a long term collaboration with Oonagh Slater called Two Girls and a Pop Song.
Feature image: Please Do Not Move by Rachael Wisby, Temperance Hall 2019 Melbourne Fringe Program. Photography: Pat Casten
Images above: Development showing of Please Do Not Move by Rachael Wisby at the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti