about the artists:
Alia ardon
An emerging filmmaker and editor, as well as student and a dancer, Alia has worked on various projects including Safdar Ahmed's video installation 'Border Farce' for documenta fifteen, PACT's Colours of Country film and is currently working on a project archiving the Ballroom scene in Eora with the State Library of NSW.
Alia is intrigued by the moving body in space, society, politics and art. Her curiosity lies in how film can be used as a medium through which the positionality of bodies in the world around us can be visualised. Improvisation is central to both Alia’s dance and film practices.
Cassidy McDermott Smith
Cassidy is a queer dancer, choreographer and educator based on Gadigal country with wealthy training in classical ballet and Modern techniques.
Now working on a solo film project, Cassidy explores how the body can be used as an archive to recollect both important and mundane experiences, and how the body changes over time in subtle and monumental ways. Cassidy’s project acts as a gateway to become more intimate with her own memories, to bridge present and past, and experiment with technology as a tool to further one’s own bodily autonomy.
PACT LAB IMPROVISING BETWEEN TEXT AND MOVEMENT
vishnu arunasalam
Vishnu Arunasalam is a Bharathnatyam dancer, drawing upon the tools of Bharathnatyam, his mother tongue Tamil, and his mixed identity as a Srilankan born Australian to shape meaning in his work.
Developed with his fellow dancers from Agal Dance Company, Vishnu’s project ‘Home – In Six Yards’ collates the lived experiences of his community in Western Sydney, community elders and the diaspora of the Saree. Vishnu unearths dark narratives, stories of war and forced migration all linked with the Saree as the recurring motif, the common thread.
josh freedman
daley rangi
Daley is an antidisciplinary Māori artist, exploring how self-biographies and identity labels are all-at-once discomforting, superfluous, and crucial, and how such self-biographies seem to be in dialogue with systems of power.
Storytelling runs thick in Daley’s blood, ‘as trickling sands of time left by ancestors of all different kinds of kin’. Their new work ‘Burnt Tongue’ presents the idea of Daley’s ancestral language as something tangible within the body, almost objectified and able to be gifted (or stolen, as it has been), rather than a vocal or written output.
Savannah Stimson
jalen ong
Olivia hadley
Born in Malaysia, Jalen is a transgender actor and theatre-maker who graduated from Federation University Arts Academy in 2021 with experience as co-creator of Exquisite Corpse and involvement in shows such as The Sparagus Garden, Vinegar Tom and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Jalen is a technology enthusiast with an interest in trauma healing, and has begun developing his new work, Perjalanan. This is a partially devised work based loosely on Jalen’s experience secretly navigating his transition in Malaysia.
A Sydney-based dancer and emerging artist, Olivia Hadley explores how a wide variety of movement skills and intellectual frameworks can be used to create conceptual ideas and encourage reflection, discussion and experiential analysis.
Olivia aims to remain curious about exploration through the development of her practice and focuses on placing an emphasis on accessing and framing strength, power, and dynamics within movement. She is inspired by artistic mediums and individuals within the street and contemporary dance scenes, as well as martial arts.
Josh Freedman (a.k.a Jiggy) is a performer and creator, working between drag and dance theatre. Josh gained his BA from Rambert school, during which he danced with Thick&Tight, Yorke Dance Project, and London Fashion Week. Since returning to Australia in 2021, Josh has worked with choreographers such as Sophia Ndaba, Sue Healey, and Chloé Fournier.
Josh’s creative practice is informed by a passion for queer-centric, interdisciplinary approaches to movement. His work is performed at club, theatre, festival, and gallery settings. Recent/ongoing large-scale projects include ‘Sweet Fleshed, Loose Skinned & Highly Perfumed’ for Sydney Fringe and ‘Dialogues with my butt’ for BrandX Flying Nun.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Savannah explores the broader practice of creative non-fiction writing, poetry, sound scaping and movement that synergises their experiences across time. This includes charting the relationships between inner world, body, and place, healing processes and multiplicities becoming in a queer trans Black personhood.
Savannah prioritises the body as a foundation of inherent knowledge, exploring the liminal space between mediums and how they communicate with each other. What emerges at the interstice when an intention has been set, or an experience asks to be shared?