100 local dancers and movers needed to create an epic, once-in-a-lifetime event.

Us And All Of This, the remarkable new public dance work by Liesel Zink is set to premiere in early 2023 across three venues thanks to a partnership between Performing Lines Vic, Arts Centre Melbourne, Geelong Arts Centre, and Bunjil Place; supported by the Betty Amsden Program.

Each of three participating organisations presenting the work are looking for 100 willing and curious humans who love to move and would like to volunteer to participate in a meditative and sculptural dance piece on an epically large scale. Us And All Of This is a community dance performance in public space exploring togetherness and community as the antithesis of exploitation. We welcome participants of various ages, ethnicities, genders and body types, no dance experience is necessary.

Volunteer for the performance unfolding in public spaces in Geelong, Narre Warren and Melbourne City in March and April 2023, and work with award-winning choreographer Liesel Zink – renowned for creating politically driven, dance and sound work in public spaces. Liesel uses her process as an opportunity for artistic, cultural and intergenerational exchange, seeking to engage new and diverse audiences in meaningful arts experiences.

Liesel, in collaboration with Arts Centre Melbourne, Geelong Arts Centre and Bunjil Place, will work with sound artist, Lawrence English, dramaturg, Martyn Coutts and a group of local independent dancers to devise a series of choreographic and improvisational scores. They will then lead a series of five rejuvenating workshops / rehearsals with small groups of volunteer movers to create the final work, once a week for five weeks through February and March (depending on the mover’s venue of choice). The ultimate outcome will be collaborative, community-driven project, spanning roughly 45 minutes, performed across three urban public spaces in the pursuit of unity.

In a world increasingly defined by rising geopolitical tension, ecological mismanagement, deteriorating labour conditions and social isolation, Liesel Zink’s Us And All Of This offers a rare moment of calm reflection. It forges a space for a diverse collection of people to gather, to learn, and to embody their shared resistance to an atomised way of life. It is not only a performance but a process; an exercise in the gentle act of shared creation.

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Or join one of our information sessions to find out more.

Arts Centre Melbourne registrations are now closed. For those registered the information session will go ahead Friday 25 November 5:30pm-7:00pm

Credits

Creator
Liesel Zink

Dramaturg
Martyn Coutts

Composer
Lawrence English

Produced by Performing Lines

Commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne

Core Artists
Kyall Shanks (Melbourne), Guy Ritani (Melbourne), Katrina Rank (Melbourne), Ngioka Bunda-Heath (Melbourne), Jenn Ma (Bunjil Place), Gülsen Özer (Bunjil Place), Hithanjanee Yatawara (Bunjil Place), Jessica Lessosky (Geelong)

Local Community Coordinator (Arts Centre Melbourne)
Chafia Brooks

Local Communicty Coordinator (Bunjil Place)
Jess Li

Local Community Coordinator (Geelong Arts Centre)
Luisa La Fornara

Lead Artists – February 2021 Development
Roxanne McDonald, Brian Lucas, Leah Shelton, Hsin-Ju Ely, Joshua Lowe

Lead Artists – October 2020 Development
Joel Bray, Joshua Lowe, Katina Olsen, Niharika Senapati, Leah Shelton, Ely Hsin-Ju

Developed with the assistance of dancers from Yellow Wheel

Image credit Ian Laidlaw

Key Dates

Arts Centre Melbourne

Rehearsals: Every Saturday and Sunday from week commencing 23 Jan– 11 Mar 2023
Dress: Friday 10 March
Performances: Saturday 11 March

Bunjil Place

Rehearsals: Every Saturday and Sunday from week commencing 6 Feb – 25 Mar 2023
Dress: Thursday 23 March
Performances: Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 March

Geelong Arts Centre

Rehearsals: Every Saturday and Sunday from week commencing 4 Mar – 26 Mar 2023
Dress: Saturday 1 April
Performance: Sunday 2 April

Liesel Zink

Liesel Zink is an award-winning choreographer of Ukrainian and German descent interested in collective bodies as a tool for social change. She has developed and presented work around Australia, Asia and Eastern Europe. Liesel’s practice explores the intersection of contemporary dance and community engagement seeing her create performances in public-space and use her creative process as a means for artistic, cultural and intergenerational exchange. As an Independent choreographer Liesel is most well know for the creation of large-scale public space performances, most significantly ‘The Stance’ which won the 2017 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance. Other recent Independent projects include: ‘Daruvaty’ (Bleach Festival 2022), ‘Awesome: a state of wonder and fear’ (World Science Festival 2021), ‘Our New’ (IMA Gallery 2020), ‘We and the Uncertain’ (Ukraine 2019) and ‘Inter’ (Flowstate 2018). As a choreographer, Liesel has also been commissioned to choreograph for Expressions Dance Company, Tasdance and LINK. Liesel is currently an Associate Artist for Force Majeure. More broadly, Liesel is a dramaturge, facilitator, movement coordinator, producer and advocate.

Lawrence English

Lawrence English is an artist, composer and curator based in Australia. Working across an array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work explores the politics of perception and prompts questions of field, agency and memory. English utilises a variety of approaches including visceral live performance and site-specific installation to create work that invites audiences to consider their relationship to listening, place and embodiment. Over the past decade he has worked with sound as a medium for embodied experience and is determined to share his interests in the transformative and sensorial transgressive possibilities of sound. He is a Sidney Myer Creative fellow, was awarded an outstanding doctorial thesis award in conjunction with his PhD in 2017 and has been supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for his public artwork project in Los Angeles, Seirá. In 2022, he has been appointed the Annual Honouree by the Institute Of Modern Art.

A Betty Amsden Participation Program, Us And All Of This is produced by Performing Lines, commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne, and has been developed with support from the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, Ausdance Qld, HOTA, Besen Family Foundation and the City of Melbourne.