Over the four years since its launch, the Campbelltown Arts Centre has focused on producing and delivering an innovative high quality multi-disciplinary program that brings together visual arts, performance, music, film, new media practice and dance. 2009 was the first year of the Campbelltown Arts Centre Contemporary Dance Program, supporting innovation in dance and providing professional artists with opportunities to work in new ways and within new contexts. The Centre’s 2010 Dance Program offers residencies, exchanges, commissions and performances for dance artists to work in Western Sydney. While providing a new context for the work that will be developed it also provides opportunities for new audiences and emerging communities to engage with contemporary dance and its practices.

Over the coming months Campbelltown Arts Centre will produce two projects as part of its Student Series, involving local students studying Dance at a secondary and tertiary level. The youMove project includes a performance and workshop for local school students by members of the youMove youth dance company. It hosts a forum and informal luncheon for teachers, students, company members and the Campbelltown Arts Centre Dance Curator to discuss how the Centre can be of most use to the local high schools who offer 2 Unit Dance as part of their curriculum. This project also provides a Dance Scholarship, awarded through an audition process, whereby a dance contract is offered to a local year 12 student to work with youMove dance company for one year. The second project in the Student Series is a continuation of an ongoing creative partnership between Campbelltown Arts Centre and NAISDA Dance College with a focus on skills and audience development. It involves a one week workshop for NAISDA students and young Aboriginal dancers working with choreographer Vicki Van Hout, utilising stories from the local elders and culminating in a performance at Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Photo: Greg Semu 

Earlier this year Campbelltown Arts Centre hosted residencies including: an intercultural residency with dance artists Kathy Cogill and Latai Taumoepeau collaborating with Greg Semu, a Samoan/Australian visual artist; an interdisciplinary exchange between performer Brian Fuata and visual artist Agatha Gothe-Snape; and a choreographic research project with Antony Hamilton in collaboration with Luke Smiles and Marnie Palomares, experimenting with the visual manipulation of space, bodies and objects. In July, Lizzie Thomson will begin working with local communities of amateur dance and theatre companies to create There’s A Bright Golden Haze On The Meadow. This work will respond to the well known musical Oklahoma! and aims to bypass the original version and go straight to the amateur reproduction, complete with makeshift set, calico costumes, cardboard trees, piano playing, mosquitos and misquotations. This research and showing of work will provide fertile ground for movement exploration and open up new possibilities for how contemporary dance can interact with suburban communities.


In the final quarter of 2010 Australian/Berlin-based dance artist Paul Gazzola will be in residence with Welsh visual artist Paul Granjon creating a DIY approach to making robots, films, installations and performances using the ever increasing detritus of the technological revolution. As part of ‘The Andrew Morrish 2010 Solo World Tour’ Campbelltown Arts Centre will present the Australian premiere of Morrish’s Lying Stealing Cheating and Self Deception.  Following Morrish’s season, a number of new short works will be commissioned by NSW and interstate independent artists, for a one night performance program, curated by Jane McKernan around the theme Dance History. The 2010 Campbelltown Arts Centre program will conclude with New York-based dance artist Miguel Gutierrez in residence with The Fondue Set exploring ways of sustaining a solo practice.

For further information please see:
www.campbelltown.nsw.gov.au
or contact Dance Curator Julie-Anne Long on:
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