TRIPTYCH FOR FRAME: A BIENNIAL OF DANCE

Adam's career in dance and performance spans over 25 years as a vital contributor to the richness of Australian performing arts. Adams' works provide a crucial point of differentiation: a psychologically generative, collaborative environment that continually extends the parameters of dance and visual art-based practices to produce bold artistic choreography and art works. Adams’ process draws on collaboration through hybrid mediums of music, design, fashion, architecture, cinema and visual arts, engaging with the unorthodox, queer and popular culture. Adams' work has been presented internationally at leading festivals and venues and commissioned by many Australian dance companies and museums.

Adams graduated from the VCA in 1988 and thereafter spent a decade performing and working in New York with many companies and independent choreographers. Adams returned to Australia in 1997 and established his company Phillip Adams BalletLab. BalletLab has presented internationally at leading festivals and venues in the USA, Europe and Asia. Adams' commissions include: The Australian Ballet; Chunky Move; Back to Back Theatre; Lux Boreal (Mexico); Guongdong Modern Dance Company (China); Dance Works Rotterdam (Netherlands); City Contemporary Dance Company (Hong Kong); and Niteroi City Ballet (Brazil). Phillip has continued to play a leading role in driving choreography’s curation into Australian museums and galleries, including works commissioned for MONA, NGV, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Art Gallery of WA, Melbourne Museum and M Pavilion.

Harrison Hall’s work situates contemporary performance and dance in experiential art environments. His recent works traverse states of flux within digital and live worlds, working to increase the embodied experience in mixed digital and live performance contexts.

Recently he was awarded a Solitude1 Residency from Chunky Move and the Tanja Liedtke foundation in which alongside Luca Dante, he spawned Maelstrom, a multi-channel digital choreography installation premiering at MARS Gallery (Melbourne) and Metro Arts (Brisbane) in late 2021. Through Chunky Move, he also presented BONANZA! with Dr. Sam Mcgilp, a PerformancexDialogue media artwork that included conversations with NAXS corp (Taiwanese audiovisual art collective) and Lu Yang (Chinese digital artist). This work was a 2021 Green Room Award Finalist and selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival.

In 2018, he created The Venusian Slip and premiered it at Mycelium Studios as part of the Melbourne Fringe, this work gave the first context for Harrison to work closely with Andrew Treloar and in early 2020 they together remounted the show at Temperance Hall as part of their Midsumma Festival program.

In 2020 Harrison was selected as a participating artist at the Taiwan Performing Art Centre’s ADAM Lab and is thrilled to be continuing his connections within this network. He has worked nationally and internationally, collaborating and performing with many artists/companies including: Yumi Umuimare and Theatre Gumbo (Japan), The Australian Ballet, La Fura dels Baus (Spain), Phillip Adams’ Balletlab, Shaun Parker Company + Ivo Dimchev (Bulgaria), Gideon Obarzanek, Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move and Dancenorth

Samuel Harnett-Welk is an Australian dancer with Aspergers. Their extensive experience with leading Australian and International dance artists creates a framework for them to explore improvisation and performance. Samuel has trained with Rambert Ballet, The Royal Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Australian Dance Theatre and the Australian Ballet.

As an Independent artist Samuel has worked with Melanie Lane, Chunky Move, STRUT Dance, Komunitas Salihara, Phillip Adams BalletLab, Opera Australia and has also danced in works by William Forsythe, Ross McKim, Daniel Jaber and Leigh Warren. Samuel has a developed craft that is unique and powerful in its expression, speaking to a relationship between queerness and the classical form. An artist loaded with an incredibly rich history and sensitivity, their work seeks to use the body as a reflective mode of communication to find bold and complex physicalities that reflect a thoughtful rendering of the human experience.

Benjamin Hurley is a queer and gender fluid performer, dancer, choreographer and teacher who graduated form the VCA in 2016. Their practice is deeply rooted in collaboration, and they sift through and unpack what these varied and shared experiences mean to them ‘in the now’.

Their most notable and ongoing collaborations include: Phillip Adams BalletLab, Strange Fruit, Deanne Butterworth, Lee Serle, Victoria Chiu, Emma Riches, Isabelle Beauverd, Arabella Frahn-Starkie, Andrew Treloar and Robert Downie, whom they have continued to work with for many years.Their work tethers between mundane practicality and philosophical existentialism, shining light on often overlooked aspects of life to more deeper and personal questions and affirmations.

Their work is usually highly physical, and they are interested in the premise for the choreography coming from the body as the primary tool. They have performed in local and international festivals including a remount of ‘Set and Reset/Reset’ by Trisha Brown Dance Company as part of the Venice Art Biennale Danza Program, and ‘Glory’ by Phillip Adams BalletLab as part of Dance Massive. They have presented work for a number of years across a range of contexts, and are due to present a full-length solo show ‘UpAndUpAndUpAndUp’ at Temperance Hall in 2022.

Oliver Savariego is a contemporary dancer and choreographer based in Melbourne/Naarm. His artistic practice attempts to reconstitute and reconcile personal histories, queer identity, dance lineages, pop-culture and performance modes.

His choreographic debut saw him travel to USA to undertake a residency at Bennington College, collaborating with Stuart Shugg and Chloe Arnott on “Untitled” which was performed at Weis Acres in New York and as excerpts in Linda Sastradipradja and Stuart Shugg’s “Subterrain/Underscored” at the Substation.

He created site-specific work “Surface Area” with Chloe Arnott which was performed at Prahran Skate Park as part of Melbourne Fringe 2018. He is currently working on “Creche”, a full length work inspired by childhood which will premiere in Melbourne Fringe 2022.

As a dancer he has worked and performed extensively with the likes of Phillip Adams, Shelley Lasica, Rafael Bonachela, Melanie Lane, Deanne Butterworth, Stuart Shugg and many others.

Alex Dobson is a Narrm/Melbourne based contemporary movement artist and choreographer. Alex graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), University of Melbourne in 2019.

Upon Graduation from the VCA, Alex was awarded the Phillip Adams Mentorship Award. Alex’s choreographic work has been shown at
DANCEHOUSE Inertia 2021, Adelaide Fringe Festival 2020, Tempo Dance Festival 2020, VCA Dance ON 2019, and Melbourne Fringe Festival 2019/2018. Within their choreographic practice, Alex is investigating how audiences and performers experience emancipatory engagement; how subliminal messaging or the subconscious make sense of abstract and absurd artwork.

Paul Yore completed his studies in painting, archaeology and anthropology at Monash University in 2010 and has since taken up full-time work as an art practitioner. His multidisciplinary practice involves installations, painting, sculpture, sound, drawing and textiles.

Yore draws on the traditions of classical Greek art, decorative Flemish and French tapestries, trashy pop-culture, gay porn, cartoons, psychedelia, and the frenzied excesses of rococo style. Yore has undertaken residencies nationally and internationally at Artspace, Sydney (2014), Seoul Artspace Geumcheon, South Korea (2013-14) and Gertrude Contemporary Artspaces, Melbourne (2011-2013).

The instillation is created in partnership with creative collaborator and studio manager Devon Ackermann.

Toni Maticevski has built a brand, a vision of feminine desires and artful silhouettes that have defied trends and survived as one of the greatest unannounced drivers and inspirers of modern women’s fashion and design for nearly two decades. Maticevski has collaborated with dance institutions such as Phillip Adams BalletLab, designing costumes for two productions, Miracle (2009) and Aviary (2011) for which he won a Helpmann Award (shared with Milliner Richard Nylon.) Contributed to campaigns for the Australian Ballet (2009) and in 2013 he worked with the National Gallery of Victoria on its most ambitious exhibition ‘Melbourne Now’.

In 2016 Maticevski had the first major retrospective of his work “Dark Wonderland” at the renowned Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria. Alongside the exhibition came the launch of the book Maticevski: The Elegant Rebel, written by

Mitchell Oakley-Smith. The book reveals the inspirations and themes behind Maticevisk’s work. 2016 also saw Maticevisk’s work included in the 200 Years Of Fashion exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2019 Maticevski was awarded The Australian Fashion Laureate Award, a lifetime achievement within the Australian fashion industry and its promotion and support global.

David Chisholm is internationally recognized as a composer defined by diverse and hybrid collaboration and a curator and producer of vision and courage. He is the composer of roughly 50 original compositions including ten long-form works, ranging orchestral, chamber, choral electronics, film, theatre, dance and installation and web projects.

David has won an APRA|AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Experimental Music, six Green Room Awards, a French Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Award. David’s work has appeared at Venice Biennale, Villa Medici Roma, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Edinburgh Festivals, Moscow Museum of Art, ISCM World New Music Days, MONA FOMA. David’s work has been performed and recorded by Ensemble Vortex, defunensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Argonaut Ensemble, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Adelaide, Tasmanian and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras just to name a few. David is founder and director of the highly acclaimed Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music and its roster ensemble Argonaut. David holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne.

David recently completed a major new work commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, delayed due to COVID-19 until their spring 2022 season. David was appointed Head of the School of Music, the University of Auckland in March 2021

Duane Morrison graduated from Melbourne University, majoring in Composition. Now working mainly in the field of electronic music production his skills in this area cover wide terrain.

Active in the composition of scores for contemporary dance in Melbourne, he has collaborated closely with choreographer Jo Lloyd for over 15 years, receiving a Green Room Award (Music Composition and Sound Design for Dance) for his work on Lloyd and Nicola Gunn’s Mermermer (Next Move 2016). He also received Green Room nominations for Apparently That’s What Happened (2008 with David Franzke), Future Perfect (2011/ Dance Massive 2013) and Overture (2018/19).

Other recent collaborations include Melbourne Museum’s LOVE exhibition, Christian Thompson’s Berceuse (2017) and Phan- tom (2018) and David Rosetzky’s Composite Acts (2019).His work with theatre practitioner Nicola Gunn/Sans Hotel includes Green Screen for MTC Neon 2014 and In Spite Of Myself for Melbourne Festival 2013. He has also produced the music for a number of short films and advertisements including 2018’s award-winning IKEA + YOU online and in-store campaign.

For many years he worked alongside club music label Vicious Vinyl, remixing many established Australian artists, and has played a part in releases that have earned accolades including numerous Aria awards and a UK #1 single (Madison Avenue’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’). Remixes as half of Sneaker Fox (with DJ Lorne Padman) include Gotye’s SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW.

These collaborations have been exhibited at Venice Biennale, Melbourne Art Fair, Melbourne Festival,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Adelaide Biennial, NGV Melbourne Design Week, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, West Space, Gertrude Glasshouse and Sutton Projects. James was previously the recipient of Australia Council, Creative Victoria and Ian Potter Cultural Trust funding for his work.