Somaya Langley (ACT)

Somaya Langley is a sound and new media artist (www.criticalsenses.com) and has presented work in events such as Liquid Architecture 6, Sound Lab Channel III, Electrofringe and Skylounge. She has completed commissions for Experimenta’s New Visions and the National Film and Sound Archive’s Ten Minutes of Passion, and received funding support from ANAT, artsACT and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Somaya was a member of the sensor- trio HyperSense Complex and comprises one half of the duo MetaSense. She hosts a radio programme, SubSequence, broadcast across the Community Radio Network. In addition, she is currently the National Library of Australia’s Digital Preservation Manager. Her work has included development of MusicAustralia (www.musicaustralia.org) and the Library’s Digital Collections.

Alan Schacher

A designer, dancer-performer and artist with particular focus on
spatial experience and bodily mediation, Alan has developed an
architectural approach to the interpretation of sites through
ensemble performance, solo dance, video, installation and performance
art. The body (both of performer and spectator) is always a primary
means and reference point. Embracing collaboration as practice, his
work is a vehicle to explore notions of presence and relationships
between body and location, space and matter. His hope is to
meaningfully transform the perception and experience of the onlooker
whilst undermining rote responses.

In 1992 he formed the (all-male) Performance Ensemble Gravity
Feed,and has performed in all the company’s works and conceived and
designed many of their sets. As a dancer he was profoundly influenced
by the methods of Butoh dancer Min Tanaka, with whom Alan trained and
performed in Japan (with MaijukuCo.) from 1989-91. An undercurrent of
cultural landscapes and diasporic references, both imagined and
inherited, form significant motifs in his work. Alan was co-recipient
of the 1994 NSW Helpmann Scholarship for Dance.In 2005 he was participant in Capturing the Moving Mind, a Conference
on the Trans-Siberian Railway prior to undertaking an
AsialinkPerforming Arts Residency in China.

In Jan 2006 he worked as a volunteer with The Snow Showon snow
installation-architecture in Sestriere, Italy. In August he will lead
a Critical Path research project on the topic of Blandness and hopes
to return to China in October to participate in the Da-Dao Live Art
Festival in Beijing.

Caitlin Newton-Broad (NSW)

Caitlin Newton-Broad makes live performance using location, temporary community, performance and video. She has earned a living as a director, teacher, performer, project manager, producer and writer. She just returned to Australia to live and joined Performance Space as an associate director. Her most recent work was The Living Room Project in London, a performance research project with artists Sheila Ghelani and Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa.
Over the past two and a half years, Caitlin worked with Blast Theory in the UK, as Creative Assistant & Project Manager touring Europe, Japan and USA with Can You See Me Now? and Uncle Roy All Around You and on the development of Day of the Figurines and Light Square. She also contributed to Blast Theory’s interactive exhibitions for permanent display in museums: Flypad and The Energy Gallery. (www.blasttheory.co.uk)
Caitlin was Artistic Director of PACT Youth Theatre (1999-2002) and has worked in Redfern/Waterloo on Stand Your Ground and a young people’s cultural exchange to Aotearoa/NewZealand (2001– 2003). From 97-2005 she made site-based performance works with Gail Priest and Samuel James and worked with Australian companies including Urban Theatre Projects, Company B, Playbox and ABC radio. She has taught in four universities in Australia and the UK.

Peter Notley (NSW)

Peter Notley studied law and economics at Macquarie University in the 80s and worked as a lawyer in the corporate, community, criminal and Indigenous areas. In the late 90s he ran away to train in dance and has been creating performance works since then. His work and creative process is firmly based in the physical, generated by improvisation and collaboration with performance makers across disciplines. He has worked with Company Chaos (integrated dance company) and Igneous (mix media performance).
Initially his interest was our relationship with power, the comfort of patterns and our resistance to change. His current interest is the secret life of modern man and his contemporary codes of behaviour, which he explores via Big Man Wee Man Physical Theatre Company, founded by Peter with Eddie Kay (DV8) and Simon Adams (Spaghetti Circus) in 2004. Peter’s other performance company is the Flotsam Factory, which specialises in creating commissioned works addressing social and environmental issues. He teaches contact improvisation dance and works as a mediator and facilitator. Peter lives in Byron Bay.

Simone O’Brien (VIC)

Simone O’Brien specialises in contemporary physical performance processes, initiating and creating innovative work across media and disciplines. Simone has worked and/ or toured nationally and internationally with a variety of companies such as Circus Oz, Stalker, Legs on the Wall, The Partyline, and Club Swing; participated in national and international circus training projects with The Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Circus Oz, The Circus Space (London), Jean Palacy School of Flying Trapeze (Paris), and master classes with Philippe Gaulier, Wendy Houston/DV8, and Enrique Pardo. In 2005 Simone conducted an Asia Link grant residency in East Timor with BIBI BULAK conducting performance and physical theatre workshops. Collaboratively, they mounted Timor’s first outdoor piece of site-specific physical theatre, ‘Ikan Bo’ot’ or ‘Big Fish.’
Simone is currently writing her new project (sic), in which she seeks to use her own experiences of serious illness and surgical intervention as a catalyst for wider-ranging investigations into the social representation of the apparently dysfunctional body, and its mobilisation within social, cultural and imaginative space. A recent aspect of the work includes the construction of a 1930’s freak/side-show museum, the Odditorium for the 2006 Adelaide Fringe.

Teik-Kim Pok (NSW)

Teik-Kim Pok has been engaged in a multidisciplinary practice traversing theatre, performance, dance and multimedia since his days as founding member of Sydney performance group Shagging Julie (sound artist Michelle Outram, writer-performer Gavin Sladen, 2001-4). In 2005, Teik-Kim initiated a SPARK mentoring partnership with performer-multimedia practitioner Rolando Ramos, developing skills animation and video on PACT Youth Theatre’s Before The Lights Go Out presented at The Studio at Sydney Opera House (December 2005). He simultaneously participated in Urban Theatre Projects 2005 Ensemble, where he attended a series of master-classes and creative development opportunities with widely respected international theatre and performance-makers in the company of 19 other Sydney-based emerging artists.
Teik-Kim’s solo work looks at the transgression of existing constructions of identity within popular culture, first explored in Post-Op Chamber Piece (UNSW 2002) as an Asian iteration of elusive media darling/victim Michael Jackson and then furthered in a recent collaboration with Alexis Motassam in You Oughta Know (UTP 2005), a live-cum-video based work looking at the intersection between celebrity, pop music and New Age philosophy. He is also unable to shake off a Nagging Karaoke/Cabaret Addiction, slaughtering well-known songs regularly in front of Drunk Pub Audiences (DPAs).

Dani Powell (NT)

Dani Powell is an animateur and director based in Alice Springs since 1999. As creative instigator and artistic director of red shoes Dani creates movement-based performance installations in response to the physical and social landscape of the desert. Dani completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Animateuring at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2003 and has trained in movement improvisation with Barry Laing, John Britton, Al Wunder, Rinske Goldberg and Tony Yap. She has also trained in community theatre with Makhampom Community Theatre in Thailand (2001) and PETA (Indonesia) at Magdalena Aotearoa in 1999.

Tamara Saulwick (VIC)

Tamara Saulwick is an independent performance maker, performer and teacher based in Melbourne. Her training and experience have been in a diverse range of areas from dance through to theatre, outdoor performance and large–scale outdoor community events. Between 1999 and 2001 Tamara undertook a Master’s degree in Animateuring (VCA). Her research focused on processes of creating cross-disciplinary performance and the integration of new technologies into the performance environment. During this period she created and performed her solo work map folding for beginners (2001). Tamara’s most recent work Imprint (Dancehouse August 2005) was a continuation of this line of enquiry. She is currently a member of Melbourne Playback Theatre Company where she works as an actor, and is employed as a lecturer in the Theatre/Drama departments of both Deakin University and Victoria University.

Lara Thoms (NSW)

Lara Thoms is a Sydney based emerging artist with an interest in interventionist art and experiementing with elements of performance, installation, video and new media. She collaborates under the title spat+loogie with Kat Barron and recently premiered their interactive installation new!shop as part of the Next Wave Festival and Arts House program. The work, which uses live performance and barcode technology to trigger videos is also touring to Canberra Contemporary Art Space and was the recipient of a NUCA award. As a member of the Impact 2004 ensemble, she performed and vision-mixed in Suspect at PACT Theatre and recently did installation and additonal video for Constellations at The Performance Space. Her Installations and performances have been shown at Sydney Esquisse Festival, Breadbox Gallery, Perth, Space3, First Draft Gallery and PACT theatre.