Michelle Blakeney (NSW)
www.anat.org.au/nisnma/blackout/

Michelle Blakeney is a Yaegl woman from the Far North Coast of New South Wales. She has been a photographer for several years, and her continuing passion and ambition is to document her own people’s unique culture and history through photography.

Hundreds of photographs stored in crates at her mother’s house record over 16 years of familial events and gatherings. While for many families this is not out of the ordinary, for Aboriginal families, many of whom are only now recovering members from forced separations, photography provides a link from the past to the present that is immediate and powerful. It is this healing power of photography that fuels her love of the medium.

Currently a resident of Sydney, Michelle recently branched out from her visual arts practice to encompass screen-based practice. Her first short film, STARR, is based on a multi-media project Michelle was involved with at Swinbourne University. The project is about a 1920’s New York socialite who was sexually abused as a child, grew up to be become, in the eyes of many, a tramp and gold digger, and then apparently committed suicide by drowning herself. Michelle collaborated on the project as visual designer, and decided to develop the work further, creating a short film with assistance from Metro Screen in Sydney.

Michelle also recently attended the National Indigenous School in New Media Arts in Adelaide, undertaking courses in a wider range of multi-media studies, including web design, digital photography, and lighting.

Shannon Bott (WA)

Shannon Bott is a choreographer, performer and teacher of dance and physical theatre. She graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 1996 and has undertaken further development with Wendy Houston, Rosalind Crisp, Nikki Heywood, Kate Champion, Barry Laing, Alice Cummins and Al Wunder.

Shannon Bott is a currently the creative director of SHOTT dance theatre. SHOTT has most recently performed so … do you come here often? for STRUT at the Perth International Arts Festival 2003. During 2002, SHOTT presented Nice Mate - Nice for the Artrage Festival (Perth) and The Morning After, the Night Before for Mobile States II in Sydney and Perth.

She has worked with companies such as the West Australian Opera, Co. Loaded, Fieldworks Performance Group, Barking Gecko Theatre Company, Physical Architecture and Amber Dance Collective, Steamworks Arts Productions, Steps Youth Dance Company, BSX Theatre Company, and Short Fuse Theatre Company. Shannon has also collaborated with independent artists such as Lucy Guerin, Sue Peacock, Claudia Alessi, Chrissie Parrott, Felicity Bott, Danielle Micich, Michael Angus and Sally Richardson.

In 2003, Shannon will be performing and choreographing with Steamworks Art Productions’ The Drovers Wives, and undertaking creative development for a new work and conducting workshops at the Northern Rivers Performing Arts Centre in Lismore.

Sue Broadway (NSW)
www.artmedia.com.au/broadway.htm

Sue Broadway is a performer, producer and director of circus, visual theatre and outdoor events. In 1978 she co-founded Circus Oz and performed as an aerialist and acrobat until 1984. She then moved to London, and established her own company Ra-Ra Zoo, England’s first circus-based theatre company, touring throughout the U.K., Canada, U.S., South America, Africa and Europe. While in the U.K. she also directed a number of large-scale and community events for organisations including Belfast Community Circus, Waterman's Arts Centre, Company of the Imagination, Acco Festival (Israel) and Skylight Circus.

She returned to Australia in 1992 and was Artistic Director of Circus Oz until 1995, facilitating collaborations with Back to Back Theatre (Freak Show) and Handspan (Moomba Barge). In 1998 she was awarded an Australia Council fellowship to research the eccentric comedians of the Vaudeville tradition, resulting in the show Eccentric Acts, which has toured Australia and the U.K.
She was Circus Skills Director for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Sydney Olympic Games, and directed the community Sunrise Ceremony for the Opening of the National Museum in Canberra.

In 2002 she started A Nose of Her Own, a clown project for Australian women performers. The first production, Waiting Not Drowning, was presented at IPAC in November, 2002 and featured at the Magdalene Women’s Theatre Festival in Brisbane in March 2003.

Boo Chapple (VIC)
corpuseclectica.net

Boo Chapple was born in England and migrated from Malaysia to Perth, Western Australia, in early childhood. She completed secondary school in Perth and started a degree in English before setting off to see the world. She has since completed her original degree (which included study in French, Theatre and Philosophy) and also completed studies in Composition, Clarinet, Sound, Electronics, and Network Communications. She is currently undertaking postgraduate study at RMIT University in Spatial Information Architecture, an interdisciplinary course dealing with the idea of ‘liveness’ in contemporary art and cultural practice.

She has worked as a sound designer for theatre, film, radio, multimedia and dance (as a dishwasher, erotic dancer and corporate lighting technician). She also maintains a sound art practice and is active in the sound/experimental electronica scene in Melbourne. She is interested in extending her practice to investigate network-based performance.
Boo has received a number of commissions and her work has been included in an exhibition of Australian sound art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and on an Australian Music on Disc compilation.

Rosie Dennis (NSW)

Rosie Dennis’s practice covers spoken word, voice and improvised text. Most recently Rosie has been working with dancers Eleanor Brickhill and Jane McKernan in Waiting to Breathe Out (Omeo Dance Studios), Antistatic (Performance Space), and Body Works (Dancehouse). She created an improvised vocal score of layered text to accompany the movement.

Rosie has written and directed three plays for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, two of which were showcased in 2000 and 2001 as a part of unBecomings, where she was mentored by Annette Tesorerio. In 2001, she wrote and directed Verticularity, and in 2000 she wrote and directed Crackd. She also developed a third performance for Mardi Gras in 2001 with the working title The Stein Project.

In 1995 Rosie took a selection of Gertrude Stein’s Operas, Plays and Portraits and wrote Can Fish Be Wives? which was performed at the University of New South Wales and Downstairs Belvoir Street Theatre.
Rosie currently teaches drama to children and youth from refugee backgrounds at the Auburn Migrant Resource Centre and for S.T.A.R.T.T.S (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors). She has been a guest artist at Eora Tafe in 2002 and 2003 teaching voice and skills development and has a weekly drama class at Yasmar for female juvenile offenders. Rosie continues to have a weekly practice in both text and sound improvisation at Omeo Dance Studio and Space 3 respectively with established Sydney artists.

Simon Ellis (VIC)
www.skellis.net

Simon Ellis an independent dancer, performance maker and teacher. He has a Masters degree in Kinesiology from Otago University School of Physical Education (New Zealand), and is a performance graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne), where he currently teaches contemporary technique and composition.

Simon has performed for various companies including the Douglas Wright Dance Company, Shona McCullagh's Human Garden, Michael Parmenter's Commotion Company, and Daniel Belton's Good Company as well as independent artists Anna Smith, Don Asker, Baryana Popov and Shaun McLeod.

Recently, Simon has created Touch (1998), Semi-detached (1999), undone years (2000), and Full (2001, www.skellis.net/Full). Full toured Australia as part of Mobile States (2002), was nominated for two Victorian Green Room Awards for Best Solo Performance and Innovative Use of Venue, and in 2003, was presented as part of the Castlemaine State Festival.

In 2001, Simon received an Australian Choreographic Centre Fellowship to collaborate with Elizabeth Boyce and Tamara Saulwick on the performance and installation work Indelible (www.indelible.net.au), which was presented at West Space Gallery in February 2003. In 2002, Simon received funds from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust to research hybrid arts practices, and was also commissioned by the Victorian College of the Arts to make a short work Lying with undergraduate students.

Simon's choreographic work reflects an abiding interest in memory, narrative and time, and involves detailed improvisations that are built on top of structured internal scores. In addition, his work often explores ideas associated with viewers' experiences of performance. Simon is currently developing a DVD-based project that contains a multi-perspective 'rendering' of the performance work Indelible as well as a Macromedia Director projector documenting other audio-visual aspects of the work.

Ryk Goddard (TAS)
www.istheatre.com.au

Ryk Goddard is currently Artistic Director of is theatre ltd. where he oversees the creation of improvised and devised cross art form performances for state-wide touring, corporate and community contexts. He teaches performance improvisation, physical acting and theatre making, and curates is@backspace, a performance venue dedicated to new Australian performance.

Ryk trained in directing in New Zealand and in acting at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne and has taken workshops with Andrew Morrish, Helen Clark Lapin and Co. Phillippe Genty. Ryk worked in Melbourne with the accidental co. which he co-founded, devising works that have toured throughout Australia. He also worked with performance improvisation group 5m2 with Clare Bartholomew, Michael Hurwood and

Jaye Hayes (VIC)
subliminal.va.com.au/tps2

an insect, an outlaw, she inhabits irrational spaces. in the shadow of self-exile she passes unnoticed through the datastream; a renegade radiobody on an obscure mission. her practice becomes remote, inaccessible, de-centred, absent, subliminal…

Jaye Hayes is a submerging artist who finds herself on the edge of disciplinary identities; a post-queer performance (un)maker whose practice includes DIY media experiments and site-specific bodywork. As an emerging artist she produced a body of queer performance work that coincided with the last years of Performance Space’s Club Bent. Since then, her interest has shifted away from the production of queer spectacle towards a queering of process.

Jaye has presented work in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, as well as pursuing professional development in Japan, Ghana and Canada. In 2000, she returned to formal study to pursue training in contemporary dance at Deakin University. This year, she is undertaking an Honours research project to assist in the development of her ‘noo dance’ practice. Her current work-in-progress is a hybrid of pirate/net radio tactics and body text transmissions.

Cat Hope (WA)
www.cathope.com

Cat Hope is a sound artist who lives and works in Perth, Western Australia.
She is a composer, bassist, singer, flautist, songwriter, producer, performance artist and video artist. She has been involved in music for more than 20 years, first as a classical musician and more recently in an experimental capacity. She also runs a small music label/production company called Bloodstar. Through Bloodstar, Cat has produced and directed short sound-based videos and audio visual works.

Cat’s recordings are distributed worldwide. She composes soundscapes, music for dance and theatre productions, and writes for her pop group Gata Negra and improvisatory duo Lux Mammoth. She is also part of audio visual duo cAVity with video artist Anne Walton.

Cat has toured Europe, the U.S. and Australia several times as a soloist and in her different groups. She was featured on the famous Extreme Music From Women compilation, and was recently selected to perform at the International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA) in Nagoya, Japan and the LEM Festival in Spain. She also won the Pandora’s Box Super 8 Film Festival award for Best Soundtrack in 2000.

Her installation and AV work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and around Australia, most recently at the Australian Computer Music Conference, the e*mergence new media series (WA) and Liquid Architecture 4 (VIC). Research into elements of performance has been an important part of Cat’s art practice, and she has performed funded research into surveillance technology for performance, noise notation, sampling and video triggers. In 2002 she constructed the D.A.C.S (Digital Audio Control Skirt) as a culmination of these studies.

Kompany Kido – Mike Nanning (WA) and Sete Tele (WA)

Kompany Kido is a contemporary dance group, based in Perth, Western Australia. Their practice integrates a number of movement forms, including the Japanese martial art Aikido, to drive and inform their dance works. Most recently, Kompany Kido presented the five-man martial arts/dance fusion Pivot & Enter at the 2003 Perth International Arts Festival.

The creative team consists of Mike Nanning, Rob Griffin and Sete Tele. Individually they have worked for various theatre companies and dance companies (local and interstate) and have also performed overseas.

Mike Nanning

Mike Nanning is a founding member and Production Designer for Kompany Kido. He graduated from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts’ Production and Design course, majoring in Lighting. Since then, he has been freelancing as Lighting Designer / Production Manager and has been involved in numerous large-scale projects including: Black Swan’s Tourmaline, Meekatharra, and Dead Heart; and skadada’s Electronic Big Top, which he toured to Hobart and Shanghai, and Boop/Wired which he toured to Taiwan. Mike has just finished lighting The Finale for the 2003 Joondalup Festival.

Mike is currently the Production Manager for Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, and has worked on a range of productions, including: The Geography of Haunted Places, which toured Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT); ID339’s Cats and Dogs and Near Enemies; and PVI’s Panopticon.

Sete Tele

Sete Tele is a performer, teacher and choreographer based in Perth and co-founder of Kompany Kido. He has performed with 2 Dance Plus (now Buzz Dance Theatre), Fieldworks Performance Group, skadada, Australian Dancers Company, ID339 Dance Group, Company Loaded, and other independent dance artists such as Paul O’Sullivan and Olivia Millard. He recently performed in a sell out season in Shanghai International Arts Festival, for skadada’s Electronic Big Top.
Sete is currently a sessional tutor at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. He is also a Dance Board member of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Themes for Sete’s choreographies range from cultural diversity, discrimination, movement experimentation with a hackie sack, spirituality, the mathematics of No Yes Maybe, ghosts in the architecture, to just pure movement.

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