Podcasts about Sydney Dance Company

On this special episode, Little Kids, Big Hearts host Todd Loyd chats with award-winning composer, lyricist & performer Lance Horne

Mildura City Mayor Helen HJeley talks Trail of Lights special deal for tonight, Expressions of Interest open for the Youth Radio Program and Sydney Dance Company performing at Mildura Arts Centre later this month. www.mildura.vic.gov.au See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"That’s the nature of movement, isn’t it? We are pulled from one thing to another and these things themselves transform into something else. In that vein, I’m once again moving on from something I love dearly to somewhere else my passions lie. It’s time for me to say goodbye to hosting All The Best and to you all." - Madhuraa Prakash This week, a farewell to our multi-talented host, Mads. Then, two stories about “moving(literally)’, as we all look forward to hopeful beginnings. To Kwame Slusher, our new host, the baton’s now yours! Dance is my Salvation by Catarina Fraga Matos To Cheryl, Salsa is not just an art but a straw she clutched to. Surrounded by the glamour of her parents’ dance studio in Sri Lanka, Cheryl grew up with music in the air and a privileged life beneath her feet. Everything took a downturn after migrating to Australia, where her mother (then herself) had to navigate single parenthood. Through Catarina’s interview with Cheryl, we trace Cheryl’s journey from a dance studio in 1960s Colombo, to finding identity and transformation in the rhythm of salsa. Beneath the tapping heels and the booming salsa tunes is a childhood reminisced, a life reshaped, and the salvation Cheryl seeked. Produced by Catarina Fraga Matos. The supervising producer was Shelby Traynor. Thank you to the Sydney Dance Company and Arthur Murray Inner West for allowing Catarina to record sound during their dance classes. Doug’s Hill by Jacqui Pham Jacqui goes for a run up a hill with a trail runner waiting for a knee reconstruction. This story was produced by Jacqui Pham (FAM) as part of the Transom Travelling Workshop in 2019, in partnership with the CMTO. All The Best Credits Executive Producer: Phoebe Adler-Ryan Editorial Producer: Melanie Bakewell Host: Madhuraa Prakash & Kwame Slusher Mixed & Compiled by Zac PenningtonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iva Davies was born and raised in regional Australia, where his early exposure to music set the stage for his remarkable career. Trained as a classical musician, he excelled as an oboist. However, the allure of rock music and the emerging punk and new wave scenes in the 70s inspired him to shift gears. Influenced by artists like David Bowie, Roxy Music, and Brian Eno, Iva began exploring electronic and experimental sounds, which would later define Icehouse's unique style. In 1977, Davies formed Flowers with bassist Keith Welsh, marking the beginning of a significant chapter in Australian music. Originally a covers band, Flowers soon began incorporating original material. Their raw energy and Iva's charismatic stage presence quickly made them a favourite in Sydney's pub rock circuit. The release of their debut album, Icehouse, in 1980, was a game-changer. Featuring tracks like "We Can Get Together" and "Can't Help Myself," the album showcased a blend of new wave, punk, and synth-driven rock. Its success led to an international record deal but a legal conflict over the name Flowers prompted the band to rebrand as Icehouse. As Icehouse, the group became a vehicle for Iva's creative vision. Their 1982 album, Primitive Man, marked a major turning point. The album included the upbeat "Great Southern Land," a song that became an unofficial Australian anthem. The next album, Sidewalk (1984), showcased Davies' maturing songwriting and reflected his growing interest in themes of isolation and urban life. Though less commercially successful than its predecessor, it set the stage for the band's magnum opus, Man of Colours (1987). Man of Colours was Icehouse's most commercially successful album, cementing their place as global stars. Tracks like "Electric Blue," co-written with John Oates of Hall & Oates dominated international charts. The album resonated with fans worldwide. In Australia, Man of Colours became the highest-selling album of 1987 and earned multiple ARIA Awards, including Album of the Year. Iva's passion for technology and experimentation was evident throughout Icehouse's career. He embraced cutting-edge digital synthesizers and recording techniques, creating a sound that was both innovative and timeless. In addition to his work with Icehouse, Iva composed scores for films like Razorback (1984) and collaborated with the Sydney Dance Company on Boxes (1985) and Berlin (1995), blending classical and modern musical elements. Despite lineup changes and shifts in the music industry, Icehouse remained a beloved act. In the 1990s, the band released Code Blue (1990) and Big Wheel (1993), which explored deeper and more personal themes. Although these albums didn't match the commercial heights of earlier works, they reinforced Davies' reputation as a versatile and introspective artist. By the 2000s, Icehouse focused on live performances, reconnecting with fans through nostalgia-fueled tours. Davies also reworked classic tracks for the 2011 album Icehouse: White Heat 30 Hits, which celebrated the band's enduring legacy. Iva Davies and Icehouse have left an indelible mark on Australian music and beyond. Great Southern Land is regularly cited as one of Australia's greatest songs, and Icehouse's albums continue to influence generations of musicians. Davies' fusion of classical training, electronic innovation, and rock sensibility has made him one of Australia's most iconic and enduring musical talents. Today Icehouse remains active, with Iva at the helm, performing to loyal audiences and to new fans. The band are celebrated as pioneers of Australian music and continue to bridge the gap between the past and the future of rock and electronic sounds. Catch Icehouse when they headline the RED HOT SUMMER TOUR starting January 2025. Supported by several other notable Australian bands in Noiseworks, Wolfmother, Eskimo Joe, Baby Aniamls, Killing Heidi and Bachelor Girl - this is sure to be an incredible outdoor music festival.

Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024.At the make or break moment of his choreography career, the last person Rafael expected to hear from was Australia's pop princess, Kylie Minogue.Rafael Bonachela was born in the dying years of Franco's Spain, into a patriarchal culture that didn't appreciate little boys who wanted to dance. As the eldest of four brothers, his father expected him to be an example of academic achievement and bravado.This hardline approach slowly drove his father away from the family, though when it came time to say goodbye, Rafael saw an unexpected side of him.At the age of 17, when the wide world beckoned, Rafael left his home country without a backward glance, grasping with both hands the opportunity to become a professional dancer.After a last ditch attempt at becoming a choreographer, he received an email from Kylie Minogue. And the rest is history.This episode of Conversations contains discussions about Spain, Spanish, Catalonia, Catalonian, General Francisco Franco, Spanish history, small towns, villages, dancing, Fame, choreography, dance school, choreographers, London, Australia, Sydney, Sydney Dance Company, classical dance, music, theatre, performing arts, high school, homosexuality, gay, LGBTQIA, coming out, death, grief, artistic director, naked, nakedness, undressed, modern dance, contemporary dance.  

Jeffrey Broadfield has made building his life. It has taken him around the world, and given him a place to belong.Jeffrey Broadfield is a master maker who builds houses to his clients' wishes and quirks, using carpentry to turn recycled Australian hardwood into dream homes.It's a craft Jeffrey says is dying.He grew up in Griffith, NSW, where he learned to swim in the irrigation channel and entice next door's chooks over into his house to play.When he left school at 16, Jeffrey became interested in fitting and turning, but on the boring train ride to a factory job interview, a well-worn tie changed the course of his life.This episode of Conversations covers bespoke, custom craftsmanship, an epic life story, families, travel, architecture, marriage, nature, theatre.

On July 10th, Sydney Dance Company starts its first-ever performance, CLUB ORIGAMI, which was created in London, England. - 7月10日から、シドニー・ダンス・カンパニーで初の、イギリスロンドンで作成された日本文化を織り交ぜたパフォーマンス、「CLUB ORIGAMI」が始まります。

First Nations youth from Rubibi (Broome) and youth from Girrawheen Senior High School in Boorloo (Perth) unite in an energetic double bill in response to Co3's engagement project CONNECT 2024: THE INSIDE, delivered by Co3 Artistic Associate Dave Mack and Co3's Teaching Artist Team. Throughout Term 2, these youth participated in Co3's in-school dance residency and workshop program which involved an immersive virtual reality arts experience created by Artistic Director, Raewyn Hill. CONNECT 2024: THE INSIDE engages with themes of belonging and displacement and explores how youth consider and respond to their built and natural environments. This creative dance response in Boorloo brings our young people together from across Western Australia in a safe and inclusive environment - to voice, to exchange and to dance! Youth dancers ‘Burrb Wanggarraju Nurlu' created by Artistic Director Tara Gower from Rubibi will be presenting a devised response titled Retaliate. Youth from Girrawheen Senior High School will be presenting their devised response titled The Return, mentored in the program by Co3 Teaching Artists Jessica Pettitt and Alex Kay. This event isn't just about dance — it's about empowerment, expression, and forging connections. Supported by Act Belong Commit, we invite you to join us in celebrating our youth in what will be a wonderful and disarming showcase of movement and expression. Move with us. David Mack is an award-winning dancer with more than 20 years of experience performing with companies including Sydney Dance Company, Rambert Dance Company. Phoenix Dance Theatre, West Australian Ballet and Co3 Contemporary Dance. Throughout his career, he has performed principal and soloist roles in works by many notable classical and contemporary choreographers, receiving a nomination for a Helpmann Award and winning a Green Room Award and Australian Dance Award for his performances in William Forsythe's Qunitett and Rafael Bonachela's Frame of Mind.

At the make or break moment of his choreography career, the last person Rafael expected to hear from was Australia's pop princess — Kylie Minogue

A childhood love of dance and a challenging homelife drove Rafael Bonachela to leave his native Spain at just 17 years old and seek his fortune in the dance studios and theatres of London. The celebrated choreographer was then beckoned to Australia, where he has led the Sydney Dance Company since 2009.Also, in The Audition, we meet a group of asylum seekers vying for a new life in Australia. The play was co-written by a group of established playwrights alongside writers with lived experience of displacement. And we meet high school students from Hong Kong presenting their own bilingual play inspired by classics from Spain and China.

In this Vale episode of the STAGES podcast, we remember Arts Historian - Frank van Straten, who passed away in April. Frank was the inaugural archivist at the Performing Arts Museum (now Australian Performing Arts Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne) and later its founding Director. Renowned as a theatre historian of supreme knowledge, Frank was the author of many publications which celebrated theatres, artists, practitioners and productions. His historical perspectives of plays and musicals were a regular feature of programs for commercial producers. Between 1986 and 2001, he researched and presented ABC Local Radio's Nostalgia segment, broadcast on Melbourne's 774 and the ABC Victorian Regional Network. He was the Historical Consultant for Graeme Murphy's ‘dance musical' Tivoli, performed by the Sydney Dance Company, and given his tremendous knowledge, he frequently accepted invitations to contribute information to considerable books, speeches, biographies, performance and exhibitions.  In recognition of his services to the performing arts in Australia, Frank van Straten was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1999. Frank's passion for our performing heritage was palpable. With an ability to talk at length on any subject to do with the performing arts in Australia he was the perfect guest for the podcast.I'm so grateful he agreed to a conversation for the STAGES podcast. He was a gentleman of the theatre who I much admired. We recorded this conversation for Series One of the podcast in 2018.Like everyone, I am deeply saddened by the passing of dear Frank. What a cultural institution he became as a custodian of our history, his endless anecdote, and his tireless support of creatives and artists.Born in London in 1936, today (May 14th) would have been Frank's 88th birthday.Vale Frank van Straten - A champion of the Performing Arts in Australia.The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Today on 'Conversations on Dance', we are joined by choreographer and director of Sydney Dance Company Rafael Bonachela and composer Bryce Dessner. Bryce and Rafael take us through their personal journeys towards finding their art as a profession, the inspiration and collaborative process behind their latest collaboration 'Impermanence', and how COVID delays extended and altered the work into its present form. 'Impermanence' will have its US premiere at the Kennedy Center this April 25th with shows running through the 27th. If you're in the Washington, DC area and would like to purchase tickets, visit kennedy-center.org.THIS EPISODE'S SPONSORS:Unlock your potential with the Graduate Certificate in Arts Entrepreneurship from the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma. In partnership with the prestigious Price College of Business, this innovative program is expertly designed for the aspiring arts entrepreneur, blending your creative and artistic talents with the business knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to successfully launch and manage arts-related enterprises. Affordable and fast-track, you can achieve this transformative education remotely in less than 12 months. To learn more and apply, visit ou.edu/finearts.New York Theatre Ballet's Summer Repertoire Workshops offer pre-professional, collegiate, and post-collegiate dancers full-day training sessions of classes, rehearsals, and new choreography at their studios in lower Manhattan. Each two-week session, May 6th through 17th and June 10th through 21st, provides individualized instruction, movement analysis, and immersion in NYTB's acclaimed repertoire. Aspiring students are invited to submit video auditions by April 30. Merit-based scholarships are available. For more information, please visit nytb.org/auditions.LINKS:Website: conversationsondancepod.comInstagram: @conversationsondanceMerch: https://bit.ly/cod-merchYouTube: https://bit.ly/youtube-CODJoin our email list: https://bit.ly/mail-COD Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

30 years ago this year, a small independent film, by a first time director, and an unknown cast, hit our screens. That film was Strictly Ballroom. And so, for our final episode of Season 2 of Talking Pointes, I'm speaking with the legendary Paul Mercurio. Paul was born in Swan Hill in regional Victoria and started dancing after he saw his elder sister in a local dance class. With dad off the scene early, the family moved to Perth where Paul continued to train at the John Curtin Senior High School as it was known then, before, at 18, being accepted in the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. But in a rebel move, he joined Sydney Dance Company before graduating, it was the golden era of Graeme Murphy's directorship. It was a position he held for ten years, as a principal dancer, muse and choreographer. During his later years Sydney Dance Company, Paul received a call from an unknown director called Baz Lurhmann who asked him to help choreograph on a dance film. It was a call that changed his life. In this wonderfully honest interview, Paul talks about his early years in dance, his “angry man” years as he calls them—where he wrote poetry, smoked weed, and rode motorbikes. We also talk about how Strictly Ballroom came to be, the behind the scene, and how the film changed his life. Finally we talk new careers, raising a family, and his plans for making a more inclusive community in his local area.Paul and I recorded remotely, with Paul dialling in from Melbourne on the land of the Kulin people. Paul's episode was produced in Sydney on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, to whom we pay our greatest respects. Production dream team ✨Hosted by @byclaudialawsonProduced by @fjordreviewAdditional Production @clinttopicSound & Editing @outputmediaStudios @brightsidesydney@sawtoothstudios

Get ready to uncover the dance magic behind The Library Aesthetic! In this episode, host Loren Dermody dives deep into a compelling conversation with visionary Josef Brown. Discover the inspiration fueling The Library Aesthetic's dance revolution, its Netflix-style subscription allure, and exclusive AcroDance insights! Tune in and let Josef Brown ignite your dance passion in this must-listen episode! About Josef Brown Josef's professional career began with the International Opera Company production of, Aida before he joined The Australian Ballet (Soloist), Modern Dans Topluluguu in Ankara, Turkey, Nomad Dance Theatre then Sydney Dance Company.He performed in the GFO Production of Man of La Mancha, was Charlie Redding in Officer and a Gentleman and developed and played the iconic role of Johnny Castle in the original stage adaptation of, Dirty Dancing - the classic story on stage, which he toured throughout Australia and New Zealand, opened on London's West End and throughout the United States as part of the pre-Broadway tour (1500+ shows over 4.5 years).Josef returned to Australia to take on the role of Patrick in the multi-Logie Award winning series, Dance Academy, Dale Canning on Home & Away, Auctus in Spartacus - Gods of the Arena, Daniel in Sam's Story before playing Matt Turner for over two years on the beloved Aussie drama, Neighbours.More recently Josef played Graham King on Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries, Dr. Mike on Home & Away and Bryce Anderson in the feature film, Buckley's Chance. Josef was Associate Producer, Writer and Camera on the ABC TV documentary, Art, During Siege, Producer/Writer on the webisode series, At the Fork, co-founded CINEMOVES - a forum for dance & movement on screen and was a sitting member of the NSW Minstry of the Arts, Dance Board. Josef was also a Writer on multiple episodes of NEIGHBOURS and has written numerous articles and interviews on dance for MDM Dancewear. https://thelibraryaesthetic.com/IG: @thelibraryaestheticFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094376723332 If you'd like more amazing content more tips and ideas check out our Acrobatic Arts Channel on YouTube. Subscribe Now! Connect with Acrobatic Arts on your favourite social media platform: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acrobaticarts/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Acroarts Twitter: https://twitter.com/acrobatic_arts/ Learn more and register for our programs at AcrobaticArts.com

Today I am speaking with the Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company, Rafael  Bonachela. Rafael grew up in the small town of La Garriga near Barcelona in Spain, the eldest of four brothers. With no dance school in the town, the young Rafael would instead create dances for himself and his classmates, before at 15, being allowed to take the train to Barcelona to take his first dance class. It was a pivotal moment - both a star and a passion was born. By 17 he was offered a professional contract and was travelling Europe as a contemporary dancer. But rather than continue on that trajectory, Rafael wanted to hone his craft, and decided to return to the studio to train, he moved to London and trained with London Studio Centre. From here, Rafael's world exploded - with dance, with love, and with creating movement—which now had a name, choreography. In this beautifully intimate and joyful interview, Rafael talks about his early years in Spain, bullying, coming out in London just as AIDS had arrived on the scene, losing hair, finding love, life and choreography and living out his dreams. But more than that, Rafael talks about how he came to accept the position of Artistic Director with Sydney Dance Company, what he looks for in selecting dancers and how he has turned Sydney Dance Company into a powerhouse of contemporary dance in Australia, recognised across the globe.Rafael continues to lead the Sydney Dance Company. The Company is now back on the stage and touring "Impermanence," the work Rafael created during COVID. For tour dates and to buy tickets, head to sydneydancecompany.com, or you can find Sydney Dance Company on Instagram @sydneydanceco, and to follow all of Rafael's adventures, you can follow him @rafaelbonachela.Rafael and I recorded our conversation in Sydney on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, to whom we pay our greatest respects.Production dream team ✨Hosted by @byclaudialawsonProduced by @fjordreviewAdditional Production @clinttopicSound & Editing @outputmediaStudios @brightsidesydney@sawtoothstudios

Abrimos El Ojo Crítico con Rafael Bonachela, el coreógrafo y director artístico de la Sydney Dance Company que pasó de inventar coreografías en el patio de su colegio a crearlas para la compañía de danza más importante de Australia. Además, en Barcelona: Conxita Casanovas ha estado con Woody Allen, que además de presentar película ('Golpe de suerte') ofrecerá un doble concierto junto a la New Orleans Jazz Band y Mery Cuesta nos acerca a la exposición 'La mano guiada'. Y cerramos desde Dallas, donde Íñigo Picabea visitó el Meadows Museum, pequeño Prado estadounidense que tiene estos días un monográfico sobre Sorolla. Síguenos en Twitter (@ElOjoCriticoRNE) e Instagram (@ojocritico_rne) Escuchar audio

Cuando Rafael Bonachela inventaba coreografías en el patio de su colegio a ritmo de Michael Jackson, quizá, solo quizá, no imaginaba que años después acabaría creándolas para la compañía de danza más importante de Australia: la Sydney Dance Company. Ahora la dirige -desde hace más de diez años- y, además, las ha inventado para Kylie Minogue. Ahora vuelve a casa y hace parada en Madrid, en los Teatros del Canal, donde presenta 'Ab [intra]' e 'Impermanence' Síguenos en Twitter (@ElOjoCriticoRNE) e Instagram (@ojocritico_rne)   Escuchar audio

‘Living in the movement' is the motto of Australian Royal Academy of Dance teacher Mitchell Rayner. Enjoying and fully inhabiting your movement is a fantastic goal for anyone in dance. Mitchell came to dance training relatively late but progressed quickly, joining the Australian Ballet. He retired from the company in 2016, and re-trained as a dance teacher with the RAD, taking his philosophy of living in the movement through his practise and onto his own range of clothing. What was his journey from a dancing boy into a too-rare male ballet teacher?Mitchell Rayner began formal dance lessons in Newcastle, Australia at the age of 13, before taking up full-time dance studies with Tessa Maunder OAM. He joined the Australian Ballet School in 2005, and in 2008 the Australian Ballet. Retiring from the company in 2016 he chose to share his professional experience through teaching and mentoring, and has since taught for Sydney Dance Company, Australian Ballet, RAD, Tanya Pearson Academy, Ballet Without Borders and others. He attained the RAD Professional Dancers' Postgraduate Teaching Certificate and is a registered RAD teacher.Find out more about Mitchell on his website. Or follow Mitchell on Instagram @balletwithmitchFind out more about the work of the RADFollow the RAD on social media and join the conversation with host David Jays:Instagram @royalacademyofdanceFacebook @RoyalAcademyofDanceTwitter @RADheadquartersYouTube / royalacademydanceDavid Jays @mrdavidjaysSign up to our mailing list to keep in touch!RAD is an independent educational charity and does not receive regular government funding. Every penny we make goes back into the work we do. You can support us by either naming a seat as part of our Name A Seat Campaign or making a donation.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Popcorn Pals interviews Carmen star Melissa Barrera about her powerful new film starring Paul Mescal and Rossy de Palma. In our chat, Barrera shares her connection to the story and what drew her to the project, including her involvement in authentically representing her Mexican heritage, how terrified she was to dance under the guise of Benjamin Millepiede, and her baptism of fire in training with the Sydney Dance Company. Melissa also shares her experiences filming in the Australian outback in the height of Summer and how special the experience was for her to make this piece of art for audiences. All this and so much more in this very special episode of Popcorn Pals.Popcorn Pals is a Popcorn Podcast with Leigh and Tim spin-off series.Watch Popcorn Pals interview with Carmen star Melissa Barrera on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Know someone who loves movies? Please share Popcorn Podcast with your friends.Visit popcornpodcast.com for more movie reviews, celebrity interviews and news.Popcorn Podcast interviews the biggest stars, including Hugh Jackman and more, on YouTube: Popcorn Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Clark, known professionally as just Clark, reveals how he got signed to Warp Records, his recording and production workflow and how Thom Yorke ended up as a guest vocalist on his latest album, Sus Dog.Chapters00:00 - Introduction01:36 - Getting Signed To Warp Records03:45 - Recording Workflow 05:08 - Updating Equipment07:35 - Early Musical Influences09:35 - Switching Over To Software10:40 - Hardware Still In The Studio12:37 - Limiting Plug-in Use16:52 - Collaborating And Working Solo19:21 - Sus Dog And Thom Yorke23:33 - Live Performances27:47 - Learning About Other Producers 30:07 - Additional Projects33:49 - Preparing The Next AlbumClark BiogChris Clark signed to legendary British indie label Warp Records at an early age and has to date released thirteen albums as well as a multitude of EPs and singles. His recent studio album ‘Playground In A Lake' for the legendary classical label Deutsche Grammophon, fused his trademark electronics with strings from acclaimed cellist Oliver Coates, violinist Rakhi Singh and the Budapest Art Orchestra. Following his 2015 debut score for Sky / Canal+ TV series ‘The Last Panthers' (John Hurt / Samantha Morton, dir: Johan Renck, written: Jack Thorne), he scored ‘Rellik' for BBC1 / HBO (Richard Lancaster dir: Sam Miller, written: Harry & Jack Williams) and breakout Channel 4 / Hulu drama ‘Kiri' (Sarah Lancashire, dir: Euros Lynn, written by Jack Thorne).Recently he scored Apple TV+'s ‘Lisey's Story' (Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, dir. Pablo Larraín) based on Stephen King's novel, as well as ‘Daniel Isn't Real' (Patrick Schwarzenegger, Miles Robbins, dir. Adam Mortimer) a psychological horror feature film by Spectre Vision, producers of cult Nick Cage hit ‘Mandy'. The film's OST was also released by Deutsche Grammophon.Chris has collaborated with choreographer Melanie Lane, scoring no less than twelve contemporary dance projects including the performance of her solo project ‘Tilted Fawn' at the Sydney Opera House and most recently ‘Personal Effigies' which won the Kier Choreographic Prize in March 2018 and ‘WOOF' for the prestigious Sydney Dance Company.Chris' extensive inventory of remixes for the likes of Thom Yorke, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode, Max Richter, Battles and Nils Frahm were collected in 2013 on the ‘Feast / Beast' double album.https://throttleclark.com/Caro C BiogCaro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. Her self-produced fourth album 'Electric Mountain' is out now. Described as a "one-woman electronic avalanche" (BBC), Caro started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double decker bus and listening to the likes of Warp Records in the late 1990's. This 'sonic enchantress' (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.URL: http://carocsound.com/Twitter: @carocsoundInst: @carocsoundFB: https://www.facebook.com/carocsound/

Originally from Sydney, Australia, Kaye Tuckerman has carved a niche internationally as a sought after director, performer, writer, and designer. Her directing career has garnered many awards globally, and her performing career has seen her headline some of the worlds biggest stage productions.  She is currently producing and directing ‘Take your Seats' a documentary about Broadway's closure during 2020 and beyond, adapting ‘Tears on the Equator' into a screenplay, and creating the pilot ‘The Wicked Cometh'.  Other credits include the lead in the horror/thriller feature fill ‘The Girl Who got Away', and appearing opposite James Spader on The Blacklist.  Kaye has performed on Broadway in ‘Summer: The Donna Summer Musical ‘(Broadway) creating the role of ‘Pete Bellotte'. Other Highlights include: ‘Les Miserables', ‘The Boy From Oz', ‘Mamma Mia!'.  She has performed at Madison Square Garden for the NBA, alongside Jennifer Hudson and the Dropkick Murphys with the Boston Pops, and at the Macy's Day Parade.  She has won multiple awards for her solo performances, and can be seen onscreen in 'The Matrix', ‘The Loudest Voice, 'The Characters', 'Royal Pains', as well as many shorts, web series and independent features such as the award winning ‘The Actor', ‘The Prime', ‘Vandal' and ‘Crossroads of America'. As a designer in Kenya, she was nominated for an African Academy Award for 'From a Whisper' other work can be seen in campaigns such as Nike Write the Future,and Nokia: Sub-Saharan Africa, features such as 'I am Slave', and numerous documentaries for Discovery, National Geographic and Raw TV.  Kaye gained her degree at WAAPA, and directing training at NIDA. Kaye was the Creative Producer/Director of The Australian Dance Awards for three years, Creative Director for Inglot NYC, directing and designing multiple photo shoots, and fashion events, Associate Casting Director for Disney's The Lion King' (Australia), and Casting Director for Sydney Dance Company.  She has directed theatre productions throughout Australia and Asia, and most recently has directed the short films: “Black Canvas' ‘Fragile', ‘Trumped', ‘Nanas Room', ‘Nil by Mouth', 'Choice', ‘Famousland', 'On my Shoulder', 'JOE', ‘Coping'. As well as, multiple commercials, music videos, and the Hawaiian Documentary ‘The Last Queen'. Kaye was recently back in Australia and STAGES caught up with her for a long overdue reunion. The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

The Wonderful World of Dance has arrived in the vibrant city of Sydney, Australia to explore the dynamic dance scene of this beautiful country. And, of course, we couldn't miss the chance to visit Sydney Dance Company, the leading contemporary dance company in Australia. In this podcast, we had the privilege to sit down with the company's Artistic Director and Choreographer Rafael Bonachela at the stunning studio overlooking the magnificent Sydney Harbour. On the eve of Sydney Dance Company's much-anticipated Sydney premiere of their latest triple bill Ascent, Bonachela shares his journey from Barcelona to London and then to Sydney, and how his vision has shaped the company over the past 14 years. Bonachela discusses the acclaimed choreographers that he has brought to work with the company and gives an insight into his process for creating his own works. He also shares the inspiration behind Ascent, which includes two world premieres - Bonachela's I Am-ness and Marina Mascarell's The Shell, A Ghost, The Host & The Lyrebird, plus the reprisal of Antony Hamilton's award-winning Forever & Ever. Rafael Bonachela in rehearsal of I Am-ness with Sydney Dance Company. Photo by Pedro Greig Ascent runs from 15 March - 26 March 2023 at the Sydney Opera House, followed by an Australian national tour from May - August 2023. For more information and tickets visit: Sydney Dance Company PRESS PLAY

The Wonderful World of Dance has arrived in the vibrant city of Sydney, Australia to explore the dynamic dance scene of this beautiful country. And, of course, we couldn't miss the chance to visit Sydney Dance Company, the leading contemporary dance company in Australia. In this podcast, we had the privilege to sit down with the company's Artistic Director and Choreographer Rafael Bonachela at the stunning studio overlooking the magnificent Sydney Harbour. On the eve of Sydney Dance Company's much-anticipated Sydney premiere of their latest triple bill Ascent, Bonachela shares his journey from Barcelona to London and then to Sydney, and how his vision has shaped the company over the past 14 years. Bonachela discusses the acclaimed choreographers that he has brought to work with the company and gives an insight into his process for creating his own works. He also shares the inspiration behind Ascent, which includes two world premieres - Bonachela's I Am-ness and Marina Mascarell's The Shell, A Ghost, The Host & The Lyrebird, plus the reprisal of Antony Hamilton's award-winning Forever & Ever. Rafael Bonachela in rehearsal of I Am-ness with Sydney Dance Company. Photo by Pedro Greig Ascent runs from 15 March - 26 March 2023 at the Sydney Opera House, followed by an Australian national tour from May - August 2023. For more information and tickets visit: Sydney Dance Company PRESS PLAY

You're going to LOVE this interview with Rani Luther! ___ Join the Balanced Ballerinas FREE 5 Day Challenge here: www.balancedballerinas.com/challenge Book a Discovery Call with me to see if you're a good fit for the 12 Week Adult Ballet Course here: www.balancedballerinas.com/contact Instagram @thebalancedballerina Podcast @balancedballerinas Facebook - Balanced Ballerinas And join the *SECRET* Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedballerinas/

Healer and well-being coach working with yoga, sound, movement, breathing and art. Her spiritual path started 15 years ago through studies of dance and yoga combined with meditation and breathing practices. Katarina has been working with ancestral medicines for over 7 years, assisting many shamans and taitas in ceremonies with Peyote, Ayahuasca, San Pedro (Awakoya), Rape, Kambo and Temazcal. She is also trained Reiki healer working with crystals in her therapies. One of her most powerful medicines as healer is her voice and connection to the element of water. Katarina shares her folk and medicine music during ceremonies and connects to the spirit through sound in process of healing. Katarina's journey towards yoga teaching began with her passion for dance and gymnastics. Her first connection to the body's abilities was routed from her experience as professional gymnast and dancer in Slovakia. In 2003 Katarina located to Sydney to peruse her dreams, where she studied art of drawing and trained as professional dancer for Sydney Dance Company. After 4 years she continued to develop her teachings towards yoga practice. Katarina have been working with ancestral medicines for the past 7 years and assisting with healing circles with her singing, this connected her to Medicinal Music. Currently holding small gathering concerts and singing circles, with intention to connect to the sounds of our ancestors and spirit within.

Eastside Radio conversation with choreographer Sophia Ndaba about her work 'The Vail of Separation' showing at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Dance Company's New Breed program. This conversation was originally aired on Eastside Radio on 5 December 2022. For more about Sophia Ndaba, see: https://www.instagram.com/sophiandaba/ New Breed program is available here: https://www.sydneydancecompany.com/performance/new-breed-2022 Sympoiesis radio show is produced on the Gadigal land of the Eora nation, traditional custodians of this land. We pay our respect and gratitude to the elders past, present, and yet to come. Facebook: www.facebook.com/sympoiesisradioshow Instagram: www.instagram.com/sympoiesis_radio_show PRESENTER/INTERVIEWER: Ira Ferris (www.instagram.com/artemisprojects) MUSIC (excerpts from): 'The Vail of Separation' soundtrack, composed by Blue Pools IMAGE: @pedrogreig

Choreographer Stephanie Lake gets dancers to perform with a kind of joy and discipline which would hold the attention and the wonder of anyone. She currently has work on the way for the Sydney Dance Company, Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Festival, and even more in the pipeline.Also, a company of dancers from war-torn Ukraine are now in Australia with a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Adelaide's Restless Dance Theatre, which creates work by dancers with and without disability, take their collaboration with Chunky Move, Rewards for the Tribe, to the UK.

Choreographer Stephanie Lake gets dancers to perform with a kind of joy and discipline which would hold the attention and the wonder of anyone. She currently has work on the way for the Sydney Dance Company, Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Festival, and even more in the pipeline. Also, a company of dancers from war-torn Ukraine are now in Australia with a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Adelaide's Restless Dance Theatre, which creates work by dancers with and without disability, take their collaboration with Chunky Move, Rewards for the Tribe, to the UK.

30 years ago this year, a small independent film, by a first time director, and an unknown cast, hit our screens. That film was Strictly Ballroom. And so, for our final episode of Season 2 of Talking Pointes, I'm speaking with the legendary Paul Mercurio. Paul was born in Swan Hill in regional Victoria and started dancing after he saw his elder sister in a local dance class. With dad off the scene early, the family moved to Perth where Paul continued to train at the John Curtin Senior High School as it was known then, before, at 18, being accepted in the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. But in a rebel move, he joined Sydney Dance Company before graduating, it was the golden era of Graham Murphy's directorship. It was a position he held for ten years, as a principal dancer, muse and choreographer. During his later years Sydney Dance Company, Paul received a call from an unknown director called Baz Lurhmann who asked him to help choreograph on a dance film. It was a call that changed his life. In this wonderfully honest interview, Paul talks about his early years in dance, his “angry man” years as he calls them—where he wrote poetry, smoked weed, and rode motorbikes. We also talk about how Strictly Ballroom came to be, the behind the scene, and how the film changed his life. Finally we talk new careers, raising a family, and his plans for making a more inclusive community in his local area.Paul and I recorded remotely, with Paul dialling in from Melbourne on the land of the Kulin people. Paul's episode was produced in Sydney on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, to whom we pay our greatest respects.We're delighted that Paul Mercurio's episode of Talking Pointes is sponsored by Energetiks. Energetiks are a sustainable, Australian Made brand that specialise in creating world class dancewear for the stars of tomorrow. Perform and feel your best at every stage of your dance journey in Energetiks' premium, high performance fabrics. See their entire range online at energetiks.com.au, and for all Talking Pointes listeners there's a 20% discount on all Energetiks products—listen in for the code!Production dream team ✨Hosted by @byclaudialawsonProduced by @fjordreviewAdditional Production @clinttopicSound & Editing @outputmediaStudios @brightsidesydney@sawtoothstudios

Alexander Berlage is an award-winning director and lighting designer. He is co-artistic director of the Old Fitz Theatre. He is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Production, returning three years later to complete his Masters in Direction. Delivering a focused and creative flair since childhood, it would seem that his career was always assured. As a lighting designer, Alexander has worked for Sydney Theatre Company, Opera Queensland, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sydney Chamber Opera, Sydney Dance Company, Griffin Theatre Company, and Redline Productions … just to name a few! Alexander's directing work includes American Psycho, Cry-Baby, Young Frankenstein; Gloria, There Will Be A Climax and Mr Burns. His productions command easy engagement and seduce with a vibrant and quirky aesthetic - guaranteeing audiences, delight and reward. In October Berlage stages Let the Right One in for the Darlinghurst Theatre Company - A supernatural thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat A visceral stage adaptation of the best-selling Swedish novel and film, Let The Right One In is a modern-day horror story with a twist … superbly crafted for the stage by Jack Thorne, the award-winning writer of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this blood-thirsty thriller will set your heart racing with its shocking conclusion. To mark this new production directed by Alexander Berlage, we return to a conversation recorded in April 2019. A lot has happened since then but revisiting this chat gives us an insight into a theatre-maker at the dawn of his incredible output thus far. Let's revisit my conversation with - Alexander Berlage. The Stages podcast is available from Apple podcasts, Spotify, and where you find your favourite podcasts. www.stagespodcast.com.au

La aclamada obra “Ocho” del coreógrafo español de danza contemporánea en Australia, Rafael Bonachela, vuelve al escenario con una partitura del renombrado Nick Wales, la bella voz de la artista aborigen, Rrawun Maymuru y una escenografía espectacular de David Fleischer. En entrevista con SBS Spanish el director de la Compañía de Danza de Sídney habla sobre la inspiración y el proceso creativo detrás de Ocho después de más de una década como director artístico de Sydney Dance Company.

Naseema Sparks is an experienced company director whose passion for the arts led her to take on key leadership roles at board level in organisations such as the Sydney Biennale and the Sydney Dance Company. Now chair of Sydney Living Museums and Music in the Regions, one of our newest arts organisations, she has said “the arts is my balance, it's good for the soul”, which is a sentiment we can all agree with! In this conversation, Naseema speaks about the works of Sydney Living Museums and Music in the Regions, her passion for Australian composers, and how she became involved with the arts at board level. Her musical selections include a rarity from Sydney's colonial past – just a small part of the ongoing projects conducted by SLM.

Today I am speaking with the Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company, Rafael  Bonachela. Rafael grew up in the small town of La Garriga near Barcelona in Spain, the eldest of 4 brothers. With no dance school in the town, the young Rafael would instead create dances for himself and his classmates, before at 15, being allowed to take the train to Barcelona to take his first dance class. It was a pivotal moment - both a star and a passion was born. By 17 he was offered a professional contract and was travelling Europe as a contemporary dancer. But rather than continue on that trajectory, Rafael wanted to hone his craft, and decided to return to the studio to train, he moved to London and trained with London Studio Centre. From here, Rafael's world exploded - with dance, with love, and with creating movement—which now had a name, choreography. In this beautifully intimate and joyful interview, Rafael talks about his early years in Spain, bullying, coming out in London just as AIDS had arrived on the scene, losing hair, finding love, life and choreography and living out his dreams. But more than that, Rafael talks about how he came to accept the position of Artistic Director with Sydney Dance Company, what he looks for in selecting dancers and how he has turned Sydney Dance Company into a powerhouse of contemporary dance in Australia, recognised across the globe.Rafael continues to lead the Sydney Dance Company. The Company is now back on the stage and touring "Impermanence," the work Rafael created during COVID. For tour dates and to buy tickets, head to sydneydancecompany.com, or you can find Sydney Dance Company on Instagram @sydneydanceco, and to follow all of Rafael's adventures, you can follow him @rafaelbonachela.Rafael and I recorded our conversation in Sydney on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, to whom we pay our greatest respects.Production dream team ✨Hosted by @byclaudialawsonProduced by @fjordreviewAdditional Production @clinttopicSound & Editing @outputmediaStudios @brightsidesydney@sawtoothstudios

After the success of Season 1, Talking Pointes is back for another season, another 10 beautiful conversations about a life in dance —I'm your host Claudia Lawson.On Season 2 I speak with the most incredible guests—from Sydney Dance Company's Rafael Bonachela, the Australian Ballet's Amy Harris and Dana Stephensen, Bangarra's Deborah Brown, the Royal Ballet's Steven McRae and Strictly Ballroom's Paul Mercurio. There are life highs, career lows, and we chat through everything from bullying and sexuality, to eating disorders, post partum depression and navigating retirement.Season 2 of Talking Pointes launches Tuesday 30 August on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Play. Please subscribe or follow to be notified when episodes are released, and if you enjoy, please leave us a 5 star review.@fjordreview@byclaudialawsonwww.fjordreview.com/listen

“It's not enough to have a good-sounding idea. Is that idea executable in a way that is sustainable or do you have dependencies on things that are just outside your control?” In this episode of The Inner Chief podcast, we speak to Skins Co-Founder and current CEO of eo Lab, Dean Hawkins, on the power of a brand, creatively telling the story of the business, and turning alchemy into the extraordinary.

In episode 93 of the No Limitations podcast, “The Next Step,” Blenheim Partners' Gregory Robinson speaks to Jillian Broadbent AC, Non-Executive Director of Macquarie Group Ltd, the Sydney Dance Company and the National Portrait Gallery Board Foundation. She was previously the Inaugural Chair of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Chair of Swiss Re Life & Health Australia and Chancellor of the University of Wollongong.Against a backdrop of an illustrious career spanning business, the public sector and the arts, Jillian shares with us the key learnings that allowed her to make an impact. She also highlights how we can see opportunities in the challenges of our time. Finally, with Australians deciding their future course in the coming weeks, Jillian challenges us to think about our legacy for generations to come and brings to the fore the spirit of generosity that is pertinent to today's discourse.In 2019, Jillian was made a Companion of the Order of Australia for her eminent service to corporate, financial, clean energy and cultural organisations, to higher education, and to women in business. She has served on the Boards of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Woolworths Group, the Australian Securities Exchange, SBS, Qantas Airways, Westfield Property Trusts, Woodside Petroleum, Coca-Cola Amatil, the Sydney Theatre Company, NIDA, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.Please note: this was recorded on 27 April 2022.

Adelaide born Shane Placentino graduated from The Australian Ballet School in 1990 and was accepted into the The Australian Ballet in 1991.He also worked with Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon appearing in Murphy's Nutcracker and Beyond Twelve. After ten years with The Australian Ballet, Shane departed in 2000.He joined The Sydney Dance Company in 2002. His repertoire with the company includes Ellipse, Air and other invisible forces, Salome, Free Radicals, the role of ‘Jack' in Tivoli, Underland, Random Play, Some Rooms, Grand, Hua Mulan, Berlin and Ever After Ever. Dance credits with The Australian Ballet encompass the full classical and contemporary repertoire including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Merry Widow, Jiri Kylian's Sinfonietta, Nacho Duato's Jardi Tancat, Stanton Welch's Red Earth, John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet and Kenneth MacMillan's Manon. In 2008 Shane has assisted and performed in Meryl Tankard's Inuk2 and was appointed the stage manager for Rafael Bonachela's recent work with The Sydney Dance Company.A move in to the world of opera has seen him embrace the various guises of choreographer and director. For Opera Australia he has assisted on productions of The Merry Widow (2018), West Side Story, Madama Butterfly (2019) and Faust. As Revival Director his work has brought to vivid life the operas Faust (2020), The Merry Widow (2021), Aida, Madama Butterfly (2022) and Turandot. In May he directs global opera sensation Jonas Kaufmann in Olivier Py's celebrated production of Wagner's Lohengrin. The opera plays May 14th to 24th at the State Theatre, Arts Centre, Melbourne. It is a stunning production, bound to thrill and delight.Shane Palcentino joined STAGES to describe the task ahead of him in reviving the opera for its Australian season and an indication of what's in store for the fortunate Melbourne audience. He also reflects on a journey through Dance that has lead him to his cherished role as a director/choreographer with Opera Australia.The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Whooshkaa, Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Recipient of Best New Podcast at 2019 Australian Podcast Awards. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

More than 20 acts have boycotted this year's Sydney Festival because of the board's decision to accept a $20,000 donation from the Israeli embassy to stage a dance performance. Liberal MP Dave Sharma says the acts boycotting the Sydney Festival have found themselves in “odd company” after Hamas released a statement in support of the boycott. More than 30 acts have distanced themselves from Sydney Festival in response to an organised boycott campaign, protesting the festival's decision to accept $20,000 in funding from Israel's Australian embassy to support Sydney Dance Company's production of Decadance, by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. Limelight Magazine Sky News ABC News This is just my opinion. J Fallon Apple Music J Fallon Spotify --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jason-fallon/message

For the past 9 years, Hannah's mission has been to learn firsthand the many languages of filmmaking so she can communicate with her cast and crew and create engaging stories. This challenge has seen her working with a variety of storytelling mediums including live-action, hand-painted and computer animation, stop motion, and puppetry. Hannah has directed, shot, edited, and animated music videos, fashion films, and award-winning short films. After gaining a Bachelor of Film Production she moved straight into editing and designing live-action and animated television commercials at PostBox Sydney. Since then she has collaborated with various production and post-production companies such as Film Boldly, The Gingerbread Man, and Medium Rare for an eclectic array of clients including Universal Music, 604 Records, Nike, Qantas, Vogue, Coles, Sydney Dance Company, and The Brandenburg Orchestra. Her dedication and reputation for storytelling catapulted her from Sydney to Melbourne, New York, Paris, and Barcelona, settling in Vancouver. Five of her shorts have been selected to screen in international film festivals such as VIFF, Flickerfest, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. She has been awarded Best Editing at VWIF, People's Choice at UK Indie Festival, a Vimeo Staff Pick, the MINT Spirit Award, and the chance to take part in TedX Sydney as well as the Berlinale Talent Development program in Germany. Hannah finds new ways to tell stories and form connections with the world around her through painting and short stories, traveling all over in search of adventure, knowledge, and conversations with as many fascinating people as she can find. Watch Hannah's films, music videos, documentaries, and other creative projects. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/americanfilmmaker/support

My next guest has some fantastic advice about finding yourself through dance. Please welcome the host of ‘Dance Bants' on KFTW: Jess Goodfellow!Jess Goodfellow started her training at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts.In 2015, she joined Sydney Dance Company's Pre Professional year and in 2016, she joined IT DANSA youth company in Barcelona, where she performed the repertory of Ohad Naharin, Alexander Ekman, Jyri Kylian, Nacho Duato, Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi and Rafael Bonachela.She has since worked as a freelance artist in Sydney with Sydney Experimental Arts Ensemble, Omer Backley-Astrachan, and Callum Mooney in their own show, Jeppee Peppee at the Flying Nun by Brand X.In 2020, she choreographed  her first work, ‘Human Drama', for Sydney Dance Company's PPY Revealed and she continues to work as an emerging choreographer in 2021 with Sydney Dance Company.In this conversation, we dived into the following:Having to choose between dance and gymnastics.Pre-professional course at Sydney Dance Company.Facing yourself.Dealing with setbacks.Role models in full-time.IT DANSA, and life in the company.Knowing why you dance.Horse technique.“Human Drama”, her piece for PPY.Jess' fantastic podcast: Dance Bants.Logo: @lawrencetandesignsAnimation: @cold_tea_artIntro track: melaniac. - we're just some motherf***ing kids

Stephen Petronio is a choreographer, dancer, and the artistic director of the Stephen Petronio Company. Stephen has created over 35 works for his company and has been commissioned by some of the world's most prestigious modern and ballet companies, including William Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt (1987), Deutsche Opera Berlin (1992), Lyon Opera Ballet (1994), Maggio Danza Florence (1996), Sydney Dance Company (2003, full evening), Norrdans (2006), the Washington Ballet (2007), The Scottish Ballet (2007), and two works for National Dance Company Wales (2010 and 2013). Over his career, Petronio has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines. Collaborators include some of the most talented and provocative artists in the world: composers Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Peter Gordon; visual artists Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Donald Baechler, and Janine Antoni; fashion designers Narciso Rodriguez, John Bartlett, Benjamin Cho, and Leigh Bowery.Stephen Petronio's  training originated with leading figures of the Judson era, performed Man Walking Down the Side of a Building in 2010 for Trisha Brown Company at the Whitney Museum, and performed his 2012 rendition of Steve Paxton's Intravenous Lecture (1970) in New York, Portland, and at the TEDMED-2012 conference at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, DC. Petronio received the distinction of being named the first Artist-in-Residence at The Joyce Theater from 2012 to 2014. He has been entangled with visual artist Janine Antoni in a number of discipline-blurring projects, including the video installation Honey Baby (2013), created in collaboration with composer Tom Laurie and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, and most recently Ally, in collaboration with Anna Halprin and Adrian Heathfield, which premiered at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in summer of 2016. Petronio and Antoni were the 2017 McCormack Artists in Residence at Skidmore college, where they showed their series of installations, Entangle. Most recently, he was commissioned by The Juilliard School to set a work, #PrayerForNow, on their fourth year students for the New Dances Edition 2019. Petronio's memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, is available at Amazon.com.  Movement Without Borders Festival - October 2, 2021 - Ernesto Breton performing Rudy Perez's Coverage Revisited. Fall For Dance - October 15 & 16, 2021 - New York City Center - SPC performing American Landscapes (2019). Petronio Punk Picks and Other Delights - November 18-21 - La MaMa - SPC revives a series of solos and duets from Stephen's formative days coming up in the East Village and invites Bloodlines(future) artist Johnnie Cruise Mercer to the stage. Alex Waters:Alex Waters is a media producer and editor for the Short Fuse Podcast, a music producer, and Berklee College of Music student. He has written and produced music for podcasts such as The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He produces his own music, as well as writing and recording for dependent artists such as The Living. Alex lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two cats and enjoys creating and writing music. You can reach him with inquiries by emailing alexwatersmusic12@gmail.com.

Paul Saliba has been described as ‘a man of fire'. His dance and choreographic work radiates a sense of energy, light and warmth. The man himself is excitable, committed and vital. A conversation with Paul is enlightening and re-affirming.Paul was only guest No:7 when he talked with STAGES. He reflected on his time with The Australian Ballet, and a car accident that could have put an end to his career. He expanded on his work with The Sydney Dance Company and a key period studying in New York with the great Martha Graham. He danced in the celebrated film of the ballet ‘Don Quixote' alongside Nureyev, Aldous and Helpmann.Paul's work is fed by a fascination with world cultures and their employment of dance as personal expression, as storytelling and as history. He is one of our treasured custodians of dance in Australia. Everyone who has worked with Paul, or been taught by him, recognise a resounding brilliance and passion.These qualities are contagious and evidenced beautifully in this joyous conversation. What a delight to talk dance with Paul Saliba.

Peter Cousens' name is synonymous with the musical theatre in Australia. His contributions are many - as a leading man, producer and passionate advocate of the form.He is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art and has carved a career as an actor, singer, producer, director, teacher and film director. He played the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera on London's West End for eleven months in 1997/98. He has starred alongside Russel Crowe in Blood Brothers, the late Richard Harris in Camelot and has had an extensive career playing major roles in musicals throughout Australia, New Zealand and England.As an actor he has worked extensively with Australia's major performing arts companies including Sydney Theatre Company Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Nicholas Nickleby, Chicago, Chinchilla and Convict's Opera; Griffin The Falls; Philip Street Theatre Whose Life is it Anyway; The Queensland Theatre Company Camille, Breaker Morant, You Never Can Tell, The Sentimental Bloke; Marian Street, London Assurance & Fanny; Melbourne Theatre Company Company; Sydney Dance Company in Tivoli; Out of Joint (UK) The Convicts Opera; Darlinghurst Theatre The Paris Letter. On Television Cliffy, Phryne Fisher, Return to Eden, The Sullivans, Carson's Law, The Young Doctors, Son and Daughters, The Timeless Land and Under Capricorn.Peter tours extensively around Australia with his own one man show and works regularly in concert performing in Australia's major performing arts venues and with Symphony Orchestras.He is the Artistic Director of the Talent Development Project and conducts workshops and master classes with elite talent from Government Schools across NSW. Peter also conducts classes and workshops with the NSW Education Departments Arts Unit specifically around the development of performance skills for secondary students. He teaches in the Musical Theatre Diploma Course at NIDA and regularly directs theatre, conducts workshops and classes at Central Queensland University.He is a consummate artist who has invested his talent across many platforms, stages and roles. His experiences and garnered wisdom are vast. STAGES welcomes the opportunity to celebrate Peter Cousens.The STAGES podcast is available from Apple podcasts, Spotify, Whooshkaa and where you find your favourite podcasts. www.stagespodcast.com.au

Today on the show we have Linda Gamblin, Head of training at Sydney Dance Company and the creator of pre professional year aka PPY aka the full time course I did! Linda had a huge career dancing with the Royal Ballet Company, Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company and the National Ballet of Portugal! Linda tells her story and we discuss the full-time course she developed that has now grown to have three coordinators and about 60 students! We also talk about Linda's breast cancer journey and the lessons she realised through this. It is an honour to have Linda on, she is one of the most inspiring people who has influenced me and so many people in my journey. Dance Bants is getting VERY pre professional. I also can't believe I could finally talk about full time with a real course director on my show. Catch us on Youtube if you prefer to watch the conversation @thedancebantsshow.

Today, I'm speaking with my lifelong friend, Adam Blanch. Adam's story has often been compared with Billy Elliot. He grew up in a tiny town in regional Australia called Weston. It's about an hours drive west of Newcastle. In this tiny town everyone can always remember that Adam was dancing. And so, at the age of six, Adam's mum and dad enrolled him in the local ballet class, held in a local hall. He was the only boy. And so, his life in dance began. In this very candid and courageous interview, Adam opens up about his childhood, the bullying he suffered, his sexuality, but also the joys and the adventures he's had along the way to ultimately create the career and the life of his dreams. For the latest in all things dance, head to fjordreview.com and follow us on Instagram at @fjordreview

(Originally aired in June 2021) Shane Placentino has made the move from ballet dancer, to choreographer, and now opera director. He began his career with the Australian Ballet in 1991, dancing the entire classical and contemporary repertoire. He went on to be with the Sydney Dance Company from 2002, but more recently he's hung up his dance shoes and moved into direction with Opera Australia - currently being the Revival Director for Aida, which opened at the Sydney Opera House on 22 June, and is due to return again after the current lockdown.

Shane goes Back Stage with Regina Botros to talk about Aida the Opera and his life on the stage. OPERA AUSTRALIA- AIDA ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND CHOREOGRAPHER Adelaide born Shane Placentino graduated from The Australian Ballet School in 1990 and was accepted into the Australian Ballet in 1991. As a member of the Ballet, Shane danced in the entire classical and contemporary repertoire. He also worked with Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon appearing in Murphy's Nutcracker and Beyond Twelve. After ten years with The Australian Ballet, Shane left in 2000. He joined Sydney Dance Company in 2002. Sydney Dance Company repertoire: Ellipse, Air and other invisible forces, Salome, Free Radicals, the role of ‘Jack' in Tivoli, Underland, Random Play, Some Rooms, Grand, Hua Mulan, Berlin and Ever After Ever. Other credits: The Australian Ballet: full classical and contemporary repertoire including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Merry Widow, Jiri Kylian's Sinfonietta, Nacho Duato's Jardi Tancat, Stanton Welch's Red Earth, John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet and Kenneth MacMillan's Manon. In 2008 Shane has assisted and performed in Meryl Tankard's Inuk2 and was appointed the stage manager for Rafael Bonachela's recent work with Sydney Dance Company.  

Born in Darwin, Meryl began ballet classes at a young age before heading to The Australian Ballet School. Shortly after being accepted into the company, Meryl took a leave of absence to work as a Principal dancer with the infamous Pina Bausch in Germany. Eventually craving to be artistically challenged even more, Meryl then spent time between Germany and Australia appearing in television series for ABC television before finally returning to Australia to continue her love for choreographing as the Director of the Meryl Tankard Company in Canberra before moving onto the Director of Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide. Meryl's work is nothing short of varied and colourful; creating Bolero for the Lyon Opera Ballet, commissioned by Tiffany & Co to produce a piece for New York's Museum of National History, she was also responsible for Nikki Webster's debut and the entire Deep Sea Dreaming piece in the Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony, a piece titled Ocean Dance to welcome the Dalai Lama to Australia, the choreography for Broadway's Tarzan The Musical and finally but not even close to covering it all worked with Sydney Dance Company, The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House and Netherlands Dance Theatre. Honestly, what you just heard only scrapes the surface of Meryl Tankard's credits. I haven't even mentioned achievements like a Helpmann Award in 2000 or Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019. I've just chosen a handful to share with you as otherwise this would be a very long episode! I think todays story is a beautiful example of following your gut and that 'chance encounters' often take time and patience... and aren't really 'chance' at all! It was obviously wonderful sitting down for a conversation with Meryl Tankard however it was an honour simply meeting her. Much respect. Please enjoy this conversation and don't mind a little background noise as we were recording in the art gallery and a small child decided to run circles around us as we recorded... _________________________ Get your FREE Balanced Ballerinas 'Intention Setting' worksheet HERE and start kicking GOALS: https://www.balancedballerinas.com/product/balanced-ballerinas-intention-setting-worksheet/ You can find more resources at www.balancedballerinas.com Instagram @thebalancedballerina Podcast @balancedballerinas Facebook - Balanced Ballerinas (ensure you join the *SECRET* Facebook group too!)

Millie is a professional dancer, freelance choreographer, creative director, adjudicator and host of The Dance Pod Podcast.She grew up training in all styles of dance. After graduating from Newtown High School of The Performing Arts, Millie completed her full-time dance training in New York City with Broadway Dance Centre at the age of 19. Whilst over there, she appeared as a dancer on Good Morning America, featured in a music video for Bray entertainment and took part in various flash mobs, corporate and charity events. She is a qualified Acrobatic Arts instructor, with over 11 years of teaching experience in most genres.She currently travels around Australia teaching workshops, choreographing for various companies and studios as well as adjudicating dance competitions.Millie’s most recent performance and choreographic credits include: Choreographing for LOcREaDO Dance program, Teaching at Sydney Dance Company,  and Creative directing/choreographing for NSW Department of Education.You can check out Millie’s podcast at The Dance Pod.

Sunday 7 February: Bryce Dessner on scoring for dance and film, and being a performer-composer. And reeds player Paul Cutlan's string work that reflects on war.

You won’t find a more dedicated and hardworking dancer then the incredible Holly Doyle. Since staring dancing at the age of 3 she has never looked back. Attending Newtown Performing Arts High School, Holly took out first in the state for classical ballet during her HSC and was also awarded the prestigious dedication to dance award. From there Holly threw herself into chasing her performance dreams. She worked hard in open classes where she was noticed by Rafael from Sydney Dance Company. From there Holly spent 7 years dancing all around the world with Sydney dance company. Despite some serious injuries Holly continued to dance on. You can now find Holly working on choreographic pieces all over Australia. Diva Dolly Australia The WORLD'S best rolling dance bags, dance suitcase, and dance luggage system ever developed.

Sydney Dance Company has opened its doors again after 12 months off-stage, and one man is keen to share his Aboriginal culture once again.

New Breed is an annual celebration of the best emerging Australian choreography — including a new work from Wiradjuri dancemaker Joel Bray.

Me-Lee Hay is a musician and composer, and has written scores for various television series, documentaries, feature film and commissions for Sydney Dance Company and Sydney Theatre Company. In 2017, Me-Lee won a Screen Music Award for her composition in Last Tree Standing. Despite the awards and experience working alongside household names (Geoffrey Rush, Sigrid Thornton, Luke Nguyen), it is not the extraneous recognition that drives Me-Lee, but internal gratification and a genuine love for her craft.

Me-Lee Hay is a musician and composer, and has written scores for various television series, documentaries and commissioned work for Sydney Dance Company and Sydney Theatre Company. In 2017, Me-Lee won a Screen Music Award for her composition in Last Tree Standing. Despite the awards and experience working alongside household names (Geoffrey Rush, Sigrid Thornton, Luke Nguyen), it is not the extraneous recognition that drives Me-Lee, but internal gratification and a genuine love for her craft. “I always try and ground myself by remembering that feeling – from before I started writing music for a career – where I just loved music, for music's sake,” Me-Lee Hay said. “Just trying to remember that passion…there was a reason why I came into this profession.” Born in Malaysia, then moving to Sydney's Inner West as a 5-year-old, Me-Lee learned classical piano from a young age and went onto Newtown High School of the Performing Arts for her final secondary school years. Later on, Me-Lee further honed her craft at Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and developed a strong practical understanding of musical composition for the film and television industry. “It helped me with the nuts and bolts of the business…learning to read a contract, understanding how films are made. It showed how a film gets off the ground and actually gets funded,” Me-Lee said. Find out more in the latest episode of the Passion & Perspective Podcast, hosted by Jonathan Robinson-Lees. Instagram: @passionperspectivepodcast Music Credit: "Friendship" - Annie Burbank

https://www.instagram.com/p/CD-B2tDBj2i "it's hard to be a beginner when you already have skills in another dance style"Jess Goodfellow Jess Goodfellow started her training at Newtown High School of the Performing arts, she trained in RAD ballet and performed as a soloist in the 2014 NSW Schools Spectacular. In the same year she was awarded first in the state of NSW for HSC Dance. In 2015, Jess joined Sydney Dance Company’s Pre Professional year, in which she understudied for the company and trained under many local and international choreographers. In 2016, she joined the junior Contemporary dance company IT DANSA in Barcelona, where she performed for two years, with the repertory of Ohad Naharin, Alexander Ekman, Jyri Kylian, Nacho Duato, Akram Khan, and Sidi Larbi. She has since worked as a freelance artist in Sydney with Sydney Experimental Arts Ensemble, Omer Backley-Astrachan, and Callum Mooney in their own show, Jeppee Peppee at the Flying Nun by Brand X we cover: house dancingaesthetichaving no anchorauditioningbeing confronted by who you're becomingspainquittingtaking the pisshumour links: vimeo - https://vimeo.com/306670839dancing for other - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC39BpqxL3Einstagram - https://www.instagram.com/gotchakeith/?hl=en

The coronavirus pandemic has hit hard the dance sector too. Shows and tours are on hold, making things even tougher than usual in a highly competitive environment. Italian dancer Jacopo Grabar talks about his experience as part of the Sydney Dance Company. - Come tanti altri settori, anche quello della danza ha subito una brusca battuta d’arresto a causa della pandemia. Spettacoli sospesi e tournée rimandate a data da destinarsi hanno reso ancora più difficile e precario un settore già molto difficile e competitivo.

The arts sector was hit early and hard by the Covid-19 crisis. The Money visits Sydney Dance Company which switched to virtual classes to stay afloat and is now in rehearsals for an August show. Meanwhile, theatre producer Michael Cassel is moving ahead to stage Hamilton next year, but the Melbourne lockdown may delay the reopening of his successful production of Harry Potter and Cursed Child. Plus, what will the Victorian lockdown mean for the national economy? Guests: Anne Dunn, Executive Director, Sydney Dance CompanyJacopo Grabar, Company dancer Michael Cassel, CEO, Michael Cassel GroupShane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Economics and Chief Economist, AMP Capital

Today we interview Adam Dear. Adam Dear is a performer and an entertainer! With skills like juggling and unicycle riding at an early age this was always on the cards. Born and bred in the Perth hills Adam made the move to Sydney to study and start his career in acting, teaching, writing and directing.Dear has studied through WAAPA, C3 College, Actors Centre in Sydney, Sydney Dance Company, is currently studying his BA in Theatre and Performance at UNSW and plans to study his MFA in Directing at NIDA in 2021. A strong drive to achieve his goals has continued to propel Adam forward regardless of difficulties that he has faced. Welcome Dear!

Alexander Borg is a young superstar dancer in the making. We interview him fresh off his contract with the Sydney Dance Company. Alexander shares all of his inspirations and the steps he has taken to reach this point in his career. Be inspired by his never give up attitude and determination to make a career as a Professional Dancer.

Reed Luplau is a veteran dancer who has performed in Broadway shows and prominent dance companies including Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and the Sydney Dance Company. Trained in multiple forms of dance including classical ballet, modern dance, acrobatics, tap, and jazz, Reed is most interested in being a “good mover”, particularly when movement is a conduit to storytelling. In this conversation we discuss the language of movement and the way it shapes a narrative. Reed’s interest in dancers as unique storytellers with separate identities illuminates the question in this episode’s title, which is taken from a William Butler Yeats poem. Reed’s Broadway credits include: “Fiddler on the Roof”; “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812”; and “Moulin Rouge”. http://www.reedluplau.com/Watch “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Tony Awards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j661y6KwYA See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Charmene talks to Cat Woods about how Sydney Dance Company has responded to the COVID 19 closure by starting Virtual Dance Studio, which has so far seen significantly more participants than traditional public classes.

Today's episode is with my good friend Josef Brown! Josef's professional career began as a Soloist with The Australian Ballet in 1994 before joining Sydney Dance Company in 1997. Then Josef's career pivoted towards acting when he took on the role of 'Johnny Castle' in the original stage adaptation of Dirty Dancing which toured throughout Australia and New Zealand. He was even part of the opening on London's West End and toured throughout the United States as part of the pre-Broadway tour completing 1500+ shows over 4.5 years. Incredible! Josef then returned to Australia to take on the role of 'Patrick' in the multi-Logie Award winning series Dance Academy, 'Dale Canning' on Home & Away, 'Auctus' in Spartacus - Gods of the Arena and 'Daniel' in Sam's Story before playing 'Matt Turner' for over two years on the beloved Aussie drama, Neighbours. ​This is why his face might be familiar to many of you! In fact, when I met up with Josef for our interview in Sydney a couple of months ago, I posted a photo of us on social media and very quickly got a text from my partner saying, "Why are you hanging out with Matt Turner the cop from Neighbours?" Josef also has many writing and producing credits for various webisodes, ABC TV documentaries and was a sitting member of the NSW Ministry of the Arts Dance Board. He's one talented and exceptional artist with brilliant professionalism in dance and business. Speaking of business, Josef is now the Relations & Development Director at one of my favourite dance brands ever... MDM! And this is how we became friends. In fact, he is the voice behind the MDM sponsorship ads you may have heard in previous episodes. Just for fun I'm going to play it again for this episode, not because MDM are sponsoring this episode or Josef's and my chat, but because I just love Josef, the MDM team and their products. We have a long, but super interesting chat that I'm sure many of you will enjoy, so let's get straight into it... Say hello on instagram... @balancedballerinas @thebalanceballerina www.balancedballerinas.com

Annie Reid was born in Sydney, trained as a classical dancer and performed with Sydney Dance Company and Opera Australia. Until 1983 she worked as a dancer throughout Europe and on returning to Australia moved to the technical side of theatre. Annie became assistant stage manager with Victoria State Opera in 1983 and by 1985 was senior stage manager of the company, responsible for five major opera productions each year as well as regional and national tours of opera and music theatre. Opera and music theatre remain a large part of her freelance work and she is now regularly employed by Opera Australia. In 1989 she began working as a freelance production and stage manager spending 1993 as production coordinator for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and OH&S representative for the technical department. She was involved in the advisory group for the design and technical development of the Iwaki auditorium at ABC Southbank. Annie has been operations manager for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition every four years since 1995, working closely with ABC Classic as stage manager for their live radio broadcasts. She has also worked as a freelance stage manager for the Melbourne Festival since 1989. Annie is very experienced in the show calling and stage/floor management of large corporate events at most large venues in Melbourne. She was assistant director for the arena version of the opera ‘Carmen’ in 1990 and show caller for the Victorian State Schools Spectacular (directed by David Atkins) in 1999 at Rod Laver Arena. In 2001, Annie was senior stage manager and show caller for the Centenary of Federation – A Nation United at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building and in 2005, show caller for the opening ceremony of the Pacific School Games at Princes Park. Other events include: Australia Day Flag Raising Ceremony; Australian Grand Prix Ball; Amway Corporation–China at Crown; The Prime Minister’s Olympic Dinner at Plenary Hall; AFL Grand Final parade and pre-match entertainment at the MCG; The Melbourne Cup Parade; World Latin Dancesport Championships; Sports Presentation (Soccer, Rugby League , Rugby Union) at AAMI Park. In December every year she leads a team of 20 Stage managers to present the RMIT University Graduation Ceremony at Etihad Stadium. In 2005 Annie was the recipient of the ‘Green Room’ award for services to Technical Theatre. Annie has been part of the Visitor Services Department at Arts Centre Melbourne since 1991and as a freelance senior stage manager she works regularly on many events and concerts in all four of their theatre venues. In 2012 Annie was appointed lecturer in stage management, Victorian College of the Arts School of Production, Melbourne University. She returned to freelance work in 2018 as stage manager, ceremonies for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast; company manager, Australian International Opera Company touring throughout China; show caller, Laver Cup for Tennis Australia in Chicago; and show caller, Australian Open 2019 and 2020 for Tennis Australia in Melbourne.

Guest Host Annalouise Paul speaks to educators Gwen Korebrits, CEO of Dance Health Alliance, and Linda Gamblin, Head of Training and Sydney Dance Company, about mental health in the dance industry. The societal rise in awareness of mental health and surrounding issues is currently more evident than ever. How is the dance sector responding to this in 2019?

Jess Innes, Founder & Creative Director of 100 Percent Dance, joins Business Coach, Alison Morgan in this Business Podcast episode. 100% Dance is a a Sydney, eastern suburbs studio teaching commercial dance to 300+ students weekly. Styles range through Hip hop, Jazz, Contemporary, Cheerleading, Acrobatics …. Jess is also an instructor at the Sydney Dance Company and also teaches workshops throughout the country. Jess' choreography & live performances include opening for Iggy Azalea, TV work for NETFLIX "Motown Magic", "The Morning Show", "Hardball" and more. She has also created content for "Love Island", The Kyle and Jacqui O show, KFC, Startrack Express plus many other Aussie brands. 100% DANCE was opened in 2007 by founder and director Jess Innes and is now one of Sydney’s leading boutique commercial dance studios and entertainment providers. www.relauncher.com.au

Daniel Riley, from the Wiradjuri nation of Western NSW, first began his training in tap dance before joining QL2 Dance in Canberra.Daniel has danced with companies both in Australia and in the UK, most notably dancing with Bangarra Dance Theatre for twelve years. He has choreographic credits with Bangarra, Sydney Dance Company, Queensland University of Technology, and Third Row Dance Company in the UK, amongst many others. He is currently an Associate Producer at ILBIJERRI Theatre Company.In this episode, Daniel looks back at his time at QL2, and discusses his passion for youth dance, black storytelling, and choreography.

El coreógrafo y director artístico catalán está de gira con su trabajo “Cinco”, parte de un programa triple para conmemorar los 50 años de la Sydney Dance Company. Escucha la entrevista con Bonachela. - El coreógrafo y director artístico catalán está de gira con su trabajo “Cinco”, parte de un programa triple para conmemorar los 50 años de la Sydney Dance Company. Escucha la entrevista con Bonachela.

We meet three young up-and-coming comedians in this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Larry Dean, Sarah Keyworth and Catherine Bohart, Sydney Dance Company turns 50 — we discuss their history and their 2019 season with artistic director Rafael Bonachela and former dancers Shane Carroll and Sheree Zellner (da Costa), we review the Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour's production of West Side Story, and we find out about Kate Mulvaney's new play The Mares — its world premiere is at the Tasmanian Theatre Company as part of Ten Days on the Island.

On today’s podcast is Erin Lamont. Erin is a choreographer, dancer, entrepreneur, wife and mom who has been working professionally ever since she graduated from college with a B.A in Dance, and a B.B.A in Marketing from Western Michigan University. On this podcast she shares her views and insights on how to be successful in business as a working mom and wife. “It’s a grind but you just learn how to sleep on a plane, especially when you have kids that don’t realize you only slept two hours the night before.” She has worked with notable artists; Kevin Rudolph, the Veronicas, Trace Adkins, Boys Like Girls, and Lady Gaga. Her choreography can be seen on; L.A Fashion Week, the 2009 Miss USA Pageant, the 2008 Miss Universe Pageant in Vietnam, NBC, Exercise TV, and ESPN. Other credits include; Warner Brothers Film “The Lonely Dog” directed by Avika Goldsman, Skechers, Nike, Nuskin, ABC, Puma, Wella, Wyndham Resorts, Playboy, EMI Records, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Disney, Spike TV, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and the NBA L.A Clippers Dance team. Erin also tours as a guest artist and has worked with Sydney Dance Company, Melbourne Music Academy, ABC Dance Group in Vietnam, Broadway Dance Center Tokyo, EDGE Performing Arts Center, and has taught master classes in over 40 states across the U.S. Lastly, this year she was nominated by Capezio and Dancer Magazine as one of the top ten choreographers in the country. She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA where she produces L.A’s most rockin burlesque group called: The Lalas.

Born in Adelaide it seemed destined that Jill Sykes would pursue a career in journalism. The family business was in Newspapers. Working at THE ADVERTISER (not yet owned by Rupert!), Jill completed a 4-year cadetship and immediately headed to London.She arrived in the middle of the 60s – a decade of experimentation, creativity, invention and a vibrant arts existence. Securing ‘the longest holiday job’ in history she wrote a column for The Evening News, covering swinging London and the Arts. Working along the paper’s Dance reviewer, who discovered she had been paying to see dance, she was offered an opportunity to try her hand at reviewing – and so it began!In her role as Reviewer in Australia she has seen an extraordinary amount of production and the work of significant contributors like Graeme Murphy and Bangarra Dance Theatre – following them as they evolved and made their salient mark.Jill has been a freelance Arts Journalist most of her career. In addition to Dance she writes about theatre, music and the visual arts. She also contributes writings on dance to specialist publications throughout Australia and overseas.Jill has been awarded an AM for her services to Dance in Australia. Her knowledge is extensive. Her passion is palpable. She is a font of knowledge. Jill engages with tremendous warmth and a great passion for the Arts.

Jess Ciampa began his musical life as a trumpet player but changed to percussion halfway through a Bachelor of Music Education degree at the NSW Conservatorium. He is a multi instrumentalist at home in a variety of styles of music, ranging from mainstream orchestral through to jazz, latin and commercial. He has performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Synergy Percussion, the Seymour Group and the Sydney Dance Company and was also percussionist for The Lion King stage show. Jess has performed with several groups as part of the Musica Viva in Schools program. He currently plays with the group Zeeko as part of this program.  Recorded in Northmead, NSW Australia 22/11/2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRNYP6oKgEM https://youtu.be/d0SRAN0OZqI https://musicaviva.com.au  

Lauren Langlois is a dancer, actor and choreographer based in Melbourne. Starting dance at a young age Lauren went on to train classical ballet at the Marie Walton-Mahon Dance Academy and also studied contemporary dance at the New Zealand School of Dance. Upon graduating Lauren danced for Australian Dance Theatre from 2008. In 2011, Lauren joined Sydney Dance Company, performing in LANDforms, 6 Breaths, We Unfold, The Land of Yes and The Land of No choreographed by Rafael Bonachela. She also collaborated with Jacopo Godani, performing in his work Raw Models. In 2012 she joined Chunky Move to collaborate with choreographer Antony Hamilton on his work Keep Everything (receiving nominations for Helpmann, Green Room and Australian Dance Awards), before performing in Anouk van Dijk’s An Act of Now (2012), 247 Days (2013), Complexity of Belonging (2014) and Lucid (2016). For Complexity of Belonging she won the 2015 Green Room Award for Best Female Dancer. Lauren was also the recipient of the 2017 Tanja Liedtke Fellowship. She has worked with Lina Limosani on The Tighter you Squeeze, Antony Hamilton on RGB and NYX, Larissa McGowan on Slack, Zero-Sum, Skeleton and Scrap, Prue Lang on SPACEPROJECT and YONI, Stephanie Lake on A Small Prometheus. In 2017, Lauren toured throughout Europe with Lucy Guerin Inc. performing in Motion Picture. In January, she performed in the world premiere of Force Majeure’s You Animal, You which premiered at Sydney Festival. Lauren is about to open Nether, a work that she has choregraphed with James Vu Anh Pham. Opening as part of Chunky Move’s Next Move Season, Nether is an absurd vision of a future that is hurtling towards us.

The arts community rallies around La Mama Theatre after a devastating fire, Peter Carey's 1981 novel Bliss adapted for the stage, playwright Alana Valentine outlines her creative process in Bowerbird, and Claudia Lawson reviews Sydney Dance Company's ab [intra].

Paul Saliba was once described as a man of fire. His dance and choreographic work possesses a sense of energy, light and warmth. The man himself is excitable, committed and vital. A conversation with Paul is enlightening and re-affirming.He talks to STAGES about his time with The Australian Ballet, the car accident that could have put an end to his career, his work with The Sydney Dance Company and studying in New York with the iconic Martha Graham.His work is fed by a fascination with world cultures and their employment of dance as personal expression, as storytelling, and as history. Paul is one of our great custodians of dance in Australia. All who have worked with him recognise his brilliance and passion. So it was a great delight to talk dance with Paul Saliba.

Australian choreographer Graeme Murphy on 50 years with The Australian Ballet, Henry Naylor tackles the Syrian refugee crisis in Borders, The Magic Pudding – The Opera returns to the stage and BRONKS production Us/Them explores how young people deal with trauma.

Iva Davies is one of Australia's most accomplished musicians and composers with a career spanning over 30 years with his band Icehouse, and as a composer for film and theatre. I produced this feature music show with him in 2014.The number one song on the Australian pop music charts in 1980 was The Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star', accompanied through the year by such gems as Michael Jackson 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough', The Village People 'You Can't Stop The Music', Split Enz 'I Got You', The Vapours 'Turning Japanese' and Queen 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'.In May 1980, Australian radio stations started playing a song by Sydney band, Flowers. 'Can't Help Myself' made it into the Australian Top 10 and was the first song from their debut album, 'Icehouse'. I think I was first in line at my local record store to by the single and was enormously envious of my older brothers who would regularly see Flowers playing at the local pub. IVA DAVIES: We came from quite a distinct stream of music which generated by the punk movement out of Britain, but then it morphed into a strange hybrid because of technology. There was an explosion of technology, especially synthesiser technology, at that period, so we were a kind of punk band with synthesisers which was a bit odd. But clearly, these other people were not, including Michael Jackson! There were all sorts of strange things going on, strange fashions; it was a very interesting time."The first song we put out was called 'Can't Help Myself' and we'd been playing all these classic punk venues for about three years before we put out that first record. I remember being told it had become a disco hit in Melbourne and I was semi-horrified. I was very pleased it was a hit, of course, but a disco hit - we weren't a disco band!By the time we got to 1980 we'd been playing quite a few of our own songs but still had lacings of the odd cover version of things not even particularly fashionable at the time, things like T-Rex songs, but by then we'd really turned into an original band and signed with a small independent label in Sydney called Regular Records and we'd recorded our first album, and although they constitute really the first 10 songs I ever wrote, they did have a certain flavour about them that I guess was, again, a hybrid of punk with synthesizers.CAROL DUNCAN: Iva, you mustn't have been very long out of the Conservatorium by this stage?IVA DAVIES: I dropped out of the (Sydney) Conservatorium when I was about 21, so I was about 23 or 24 by this point.CAROL DUNCAN: So how did you decide to steer your songwriting and music releases in that environment at that time?IVA DAVIES: It's a terrible admission to make considering that 'Can't Help Myself' made it into the Top 10, that I was probably fairly unaware of radio except for 2JJ. That's a terrible admission for somebody who's trying to break into getting airplay on radio!CAROL DUNCAN: Something like The Vapors 'Turning Japanese' would have been all over 2SM (in Sydney) at the time. 2SM would have been the number one commercial pop music station in the late 1970s.IVA DAVIES: Indeed, and I missed a great deal of that. I think we were pretty well buried in our own world and our own world had been dominated by what I'd listened to as I grew up, quite a lot of classics, psychedelic and heavy rock bands including Pink Floyd and so on. And then when Johnny Rotten (the Sex Pistols) arrived, the world was turned upside-down quite literally.He put all of those big bands out of business overnight and London was the place to be. I remember very clearly when Keith (Welsh) and I, our bass player and co-founder of Flowers, we'd been playing almost every night of the week, sometimes nine shows a week. There were clubs all over Sydney, there were clubs all over Melbourne, there were really great bands everywhere and on any given night down the road there'd be Midnight Oil and INXS and any number of bands.When we arrived in London for our very first international tour, we looked at each other and said, 'Let's get a copy of New Musical Express (NME) and go and see a band 'cause this is where it's all coming from!' And there was nothing on!I was absolutely gobsmacked that Sydney was a hundred times more active than London on a club scene. It absolutely mystified me. All the pubs shut early, there was nowhere to go!CAROL DUNCAN: Who did you admire at the time?IVA DAVIES: I didn't buy albums of anybody, I didn't consume music. I was very curious about music but most of what I listened to was via 2JJ. 2JJ was a very progressive station; I think it's been forgotten to some degree. 2JJ were playing things that had been bought on import - they hadn't even been released in Australia yet - and so it was fascinating.We were hearing things we thought before anybody else in the world had heard them, things like Elvis Costello, XTC, mainly British bands but the odd thing coming out of America. There was a real movement of punk and new wave.CAROL DUNCAN: So you and Keith have taken off to London, you're going to see all the bands, but there's no-one home?IVA DAVIES: There's no-one home! I remember thinking at the time, 'Well where did The Cure come from and where did The Clash and The Damned and The Jam come from? Where are they all'?I had imagined that London was heaving with little clubs with all those names playing in them every night but it was really something created through the tyranny of distance, I guess. We had amplified that whole thing that had started with Carnaby Street, The Beatles, and Rolling Stones; and in my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of many other Australians, this was the mecca that we were going to visit. But it turned out it was really as much a product of BBC1 and radio and record companies than it was of an active pub music scene which was exactly what we had in Australia.CAROL DUNCAN: So, what did you do, turn around and come home?IVA DAVIES: We went off touring. We went off touring with Simple Minds who were just starting to break through in Europe. They'd a quite successful album, and we did a reciprocal deal with them where we said, 'OK, if we are your support band in Europe, that will help us, and you come to Australia and be our support band there because nobody knows you. In fact, to this day, and I'm sure Jim Kerr from Simple Minds would take credit in saying that tour we did with them really broke Simple Minds in Australia - it was off the back of that tour that they started achieving success here. Of course, many many albums and many many successes later I still catch up with Jim Kerr quite frequently.CAROL DUNCAN: I remember seeing the two bands at the Manly Vale Hotel.IVA DAVIES: Very possible! That was one of many hotels in that northern beaches area, and I ended up living on the northern beaches by accident. It was quite tribal. There was a very big pub at Narrabeen called the Royal Antler and it was our first proper gig, I guess, and almost residency. At one point we and Midnight Oil were alternating weekends. We never met them, but there was this kind of unspoken rivalry for the same audience of mad, drunken surfies.CAROL DUNCAN: It was one of Sydney's great beer barns.IVA DAVIES: It was and they were mad, of course, mad drunken surfies and probably a few other substances, as well. But they were great nights. It was a big place; I think it held something like 1500 people. And you're right, we probably did attract slightly different audiences, and certainly we also had the other side of us which was playing the inner city hotels which, of course, were very driven by the punk movement, so we'd look out on a place like the Civic Hotel and there'd been a sea of black and safety pins.CAROL DUNCAN: Why did the name change come about? Was it as simple as swapping the band name and album title?IVA DAVIES: It was, but we actually had no choice. What we hadn't realised was that while we were happily going along as Flowers in Australia and New Zealand, as soon as we signed to an international record company and they said, 'We're going to release this around the rest of the world, we need to do a little check on the name. It hadn't even occurred to me that a band name is like a company trading name and, unfortunately, there were at least three other acts around the world trading on the name 'Flowers'. One of them being the very, very famous session bass player, Herbie Flowers, who you probably know best for being the creator of that wonderful bass line that introduces Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side'.So there were objections and we simply had no choice, we had to come up with another name. This has happened to a number of Australian bands. It happened to Sherbet who became Highway, and The Angels who became Angel City. Our logic was fairly simple - people here in Australia and New Zealand only know us by two things, that is the name of the band 'Flowers' or the name of the album 'Icehouse'. So, we became Icehouse.A band name becomes its identity in a far bigger way that just a set of letters. I've had this discussion with my 17-year old son who has got a collection of friends in a band and they haven't been able to think of anything. I keep asking what the band is called and they're called something different every day. I said 'you better get it right because it will end up owning you'.CAROL DUNCAN: Your son has actually played with you?IVA DAVIES: Yes, oh you know about this! I had a fairly mad idea last year, although the idea had been around since 1983. I remember we were touring in Europe and we had a number one song in Europe so there was a lot of pressure on me. I was doing millions of interviews and we were playing very big festivals of 30,000 people.We were playing on one and I was standing on the side of the stage next to my band and Peter Tosh's band was playing - Peter Tosh was the co-founder of Bob Marley's Wailers - and it was a big band, 9 or 10 people on stage, backing singers and whatnot, and I said to my bass player, "See the guy at the back going chukka, chukka, chukka on the guitar, the laziest job in the world? I want his job. I had a conversation last year with somebody about this moment and they said, 'Why don't you do it?'Our manager thought I was mad, a number of promoters thought I was mad, too, but what we did was completely re-invent Icehouse as an eight-piece reggae band. We added some extra guys from Melbourne to give us a brass section and we re-arranged every one of the hits that we'd been playing in the classic repertoire as reggae songs.We put two shows on - one in Melbourne, one in Sydney - as a kind of Christmas party because my feeling was that the reason we were doing it is because reggae makes you want to dance and smile and laugh, and we had the best possible time, it was just fantastic. We've just released the recording of the Sydney show and re-named the band DubHOUSE - the album is DubHOUSE Live.I wanted to get my children to come. My daughter is OK because she's 20 but my son was under age, under the drinking age, and the only way I could get him in was to put him in the band. So I said to him, 'Look Evan ...' he's17 and a very good guitarist, 'I'm sorry, you're not going to get a rehearsal, you're not going to get a sound check. Here's a recording of a rehearsal of Street Cafe done in this style, you've got the guitar solo, go home and learn it and I'll see you on stage."And so the poor guy was thrown on stage with absolutely no preparation whatsoever, but fortunately, he had done his homework and had a great night.CAROL DUNCAN: How do the kids see your career, Iva?IVA DAVIES: Well the strange truth is that they didn't. I finished the last tour that we did back in the day, as it were, when my daughter was six weeks old. Effectively, we didn't play again and my children grew up.In 2009, our long-time tour manager, Larry, who works for a very big audio production company - he'd been working for with us since 1984 - came up with the idea for Sound Relief (concerts held in Sydney & Melbourne for 2009 bushfire relief) and actually volunteered us, so we were the first band on the bill for Sound Relief.By that time in 2009, my daughter would have been 14 or 13, and my son 12 or 13, and that was the first concert they ever saw me play. So they'd grown up all those years not knowing anything about it, or relatively little.CAROL DUNCAN: Did they think Icehouse was cool or were you 'just Dad' and therefore couldn't possibly be cool?IVA DAVIES: Strangely enough, I seem to have breached the cool barrier into the cool area. A very strange thing happened, before that Sound Relief show and before my daughter really got to appreciate my association with it. She came home from school one afternoon, waltzed in the door and announced, 'I LOVE THE EIGHTIES! I love EVERYTHING about the eighties!'Strangely enough, the eighties are going through a whole new generation of cool at the moment. Except for the hair, and a lot of the clothes.CAROL DUNCAN: When you look at that part of your career, the pop/rock part of your career, what do you see, Iva?IVA DAVIES: I'm proud that we worked very hard, I believe, to maintain a kind of class and a quality. That went through everything, even the recordings themselves. I went through the graduation from vinyl to CD, which was a massive turnaround, and it happened incredibly quickly.I remember having a talk to a record company about it and they said, 'Last year we manufactured 80% out of vinyl and 20% out of CD, this year we're manufacturing 80% out of CD and 20% out of vinyl, and the following year we're not making any vinyl at all. That's how fast it turned around. But 'Measure for Measure', our fourth album is one of the first three fully digital recordings ever made in the world, which was a real milestone, so it's the first completely noiseless recording that was made for the new format of CD. It's moments like that that I reflect on and think, well, that's because we really put a lot of care and attention into these things.CAROL DUNCAN: Iva, you're also seen as one of the pioneers in Australia of bringing in synthesizers, computers, the Fairlight and so on. You mentioned an interesting word there, 'noiseless', and that's perhaps where the feud happens between the vinyl purists and people who are very happy to purchase their music in a digital form whether on CD or via digital download. How do you see the vinyl vs CD war when it comes to audio quality?IVA DAVIES: I noted with some amusement touched with horror a program that Linda Mottram did on 702 in Sydney where there was this discussion about vinyl, and she spoke with a so-called expert who was out of a university, and with due respect to that professor I desperately wanted to call in and say, "Can I just tell you about what actually happens when you're making pieces of vinyl and why they sound the way they do, and how it is absolutely possible to make CDs sound exactly like vinyl IF that were the endgame that you wanted to have in mind.I won't go into it now but the fact of the matter is it's all about a process called mastering. The way that tapes, mixes, were mastered for vinyl had to be very particular because of the intolerance of vinyl - vinyl can't carry very much big bass. I found that out with the Flowers album when I insisted to the co-producer that we put lots of bottom end into it and then realised a bit later on when the mastering engineer said to me, "I can't cut this to vinyl, it's got too much bass in it." They're the sorts of mistakes that you make when you're young.I'm a firm believer in anything that doesn't have moving parts and that is digital. I'm afraid I've moved on from anything old-school quite happily.CAROL DUNCAN: Did you call in?IVA DAVIES: No, I didn't, I just thought it's probably too difficult a conversation to have in detail over the radio but it does infuriate me because I'm sure if you got any mastering engineer on to the radio they'd say to you it's mainly because people don't understand how these things are made.CAROL DUNCAN: What gave you the confidence to leap into these new technologies?IVA DAVIES: Perhaps it was more out of ignorance than anything, I certainly didn't see any risk involved, but the main driver for me was that these were new toys. Every time something new was invented, my eyes would light up and I'd think, 'Imagine the possibilities!'I remember expressly that conversation I had with our management where, out of sheer co-incidence they'd moved offices from where they were in Bondi Junction to the top storey of a two-storey building in Rushcutters Bay and the ground storey was where they made Fairlights, believe it or not. Management were oblivious to this, they had no idea what was going on down there. But I did and I came to the managers one day and said, 'I desperately want to get one of these machines, they are amazing.'Of course, I was proven correct because they revolutionised music forever. I think apart from the technology of recording, the sampler - which is what a Fairlight was - was the single most influential piece of technology ever created. I said this to my management, that I was desperate, that I'd really like one, but the catch was they were $32,000. That was in 1981 or 1982 so you can imagine how much money that was then - it was half a small house.But I got one, and interestingly enough my management were quite philosophical about it. They said, 'Well, it's a lot of money, but according to our calculations you'll pay for this with the first two projects you use it on.' And they were right. The first project I used it on was my very first film score for Russell Mulcahy's 'Razorback', which is about 95% Fairlight.The great irony of that was that I kept producing bits of music, because Russell Mulcahy was out in the desert filming scenes and he kept dragging up Peter Gabriel's fourth album, the one with Shock The Monkey on it, and they were out in the desert with this blasting away on a ghetto blaster and I got it into my head that this was what Russell likes. So I kept producing Gabriel-esque soundscapes and so on, and the producers of the movie kept coming back to me and saying, 'No, no no - that's not what we want, we don't want this.' In the end I was getting various clues from them but didn't really know, but I had another go along the lines of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' - a fairly mad piece of classical music. I constructed all this with the Fairlight, it was a quasi-orchestral thing. I took it back to them and they said, 'Yes! That's exactly it!' and I said, 'Well, if you wanted that sort of thing why didn't you go and get a classical composer.'In its day, 'Rite of Spring' was a controversial piece of music, and Iva Davies shares a birthday with Stravinsky.Considering that it was 1913 when that piece first hit the stage for Diaghilev's ballet company. It wasn't just the music; it was actually the subject matter of the ballet that I think was fairly upsetting to a lot of people. It's all about primal sexualism, basically, so you can imagine that to an audience of 1913 that sort of idea was fairly horrifying.CAROL DUNCAN: In 1984, you've got Razorback, also 'Sidewalk' - the third album from Icehouse, at this point did you consider that you didn't actually have to be a pop star?IVA DAVIES: No, I had a very strange life prior to that because I had a completely Jekyll and Hyde existence. I took up the guitar when I was 13, and taught myself, and it was probably also the year that I started taking oboe lessons. I had these two parallel lives and completely separate lives. I had a set of classical people - when I was in high school I played in a wind quintet and we used to rehearse every Saturday morning. We all had our first cars at that point. They were my friends and we went off and won the City of Sydney Eisteddfod and so on. They never, ever met the guys that I was in the acoustic band with. Ever! Because I just had these two lives. So my course was fairly accidental all the way through, it was probably always going to be accidental.To this day, I keep remembering things that I did. I remembered that I was in the orchestra that was primarily made up of members of the Sydney Symphony and the senior Conservatorium orchestra, of which I was a member, for the staging of the two first Australian ballets in the Opera House. I would have been about 19 and, of course, that's a fairly big moment for the Opera House to have a night featuring Australian opera in that building, and I'd completely forgotten about it. There are things from both lives that I've forgotten about.CAROL DUNCAN: 1985, your double life really starts to change as you start working with the Sydney Dance Company.IVA DAVIES: I have to give credit to our managers to some degree who recognised - Ray Hearn was managing us from the beginning. I think he considered himself to be a very erudite individual, he was very widely read, he'd seen every movie possible, and he had a huge record collection. He wasn't a musician but I think he spotted in me the potential that if I kept on that very two-dimension wheel of 'write an album, record an album, tour an album, write an album, record an album, tour an album ...', that I would burn out, that I needed something else to do. So it was he who went and pursued the soundtrack idea with Russell Mulcahy, and it was he who introduced me to the Sydney Dance Company who were a very dangerous company at that point. People forget that they did ballets entirely naked and this was quite revolutionary stuff in its day. They had a very young, hip audience. So it was a very smart move. But it was also a move that was good for the dance company. I had also forgotten until reminded about a month ago that in the Opera House's entire history this has never been repeated, but they did a very dangerous thing. They put two shows on a Friday and a Saturday night, one at a conventional hour and then a whole other audience would turn up at 10.30 at night and we'd do it all again. The staff at the Opera House thought this was going to be an absolute disaster, 'Nobody's going to go to the Opera House at 10.30pm to see a show', but they did and they were all my audience and they were coming to see what all the fuss was about. It was the most successful season the dance company has ever had.CAROL DUNCAN: Were you worried about your pop/rock audience coming over to see what you were doing and being disappointed?IVA DAVIES: I've always utterly failed to understand what the problem is between the various tribes of music. I started of as a bagpipe player when I was six, and although I went through that very, very particular stream of classical musicians, and they are, and they are a very exclusive lot - a lot of them, and they are a very intolerant lot - a lot of them, I think things have improved. But at that time they very much looked down their nose at 'popular music' and rock and roll, but by the same token it was equally prejudiced the other way around. I've never understood why. I don't get that you have to be one or the other but not all of them. In my head, there was absolutely no problem with my audience turning up to the ballet.CAROL DUNCAN: What gave you the confidence to follow both streams?IVA DAVIES: Only because I can kind of speak both languages. I had a discussion with somebody the other night about music and it is another language. It's certainly a language when you read and write it and I learned how to do that. But my dialogue with rock and roll musicians has to be completely different because most of the people I played with all these years don't read and write music. But rock and roll musicians communicate in a different kind of way. So because I'm comfortable in both of those languages, I can happily flick between the two of them, at whim almost.CAROL DUNCAN: Which is why I don't' let my kids drop out of their violin lessons - I want them to have that other language.IVA DAVIES: From my point of view, by miles, the single biggest advantage I've had in my work and succeeding in the broad framework of popular music is the fact that I was highly trained. That is the most sure, certain way to cut every corner you can - to actually know what you're doing.CAROL DUNCAN: December 31, 1999, and Icehouse is performing at the Millennium New Years Eve concert outside the Sydney Opera House and there is a moment on your face where it's just occurred to you how very special that moment is.IVA DAVIES: The penny really didn't drop, I mean, there was such a lot of pressure involved in that. The transmission, the TV director, Greg Beness, had synchronised a whole lot of footage to be running in parallel with shooting the performance. We had backups of backups because, of course, everybody thought that every computer in the world was going to blow up at midnight being the Y2K bug and so on. It was going out to about four billion people. It's not as if you can get to the end of it and go, 'Oh, we mucked that up, can we have another go?', 'Oh, they've already counted down; we're in a new millennium'. So I was incredibly aware of all of that and actually I've watched back some of the footage and it takes me a fair old while to settle down, it's (The Ghost Of Time) a 25-minute piece and it took me a number of minutes before I was, 'OK, we're up and running, everything seems to be working, everybody knows where they are, I can hear everything ....'I got to the end of it and stepped off the stage, Frank Sartor the Lord Mayor of Sydney gave me a glass of champagne, Richard Wilkins counted down from 10 and the fireworks went off directly over my head and I went, 'Wow!'CAROL DUNCAN: From this point, your other career really takes off and you head off to work on Master and Commander.IVA DAVIES: Yes, I've said to other young bands over the years, 'Just be aware - you never know who will be listening,' and so it was with thus that one person who was listening to The Ghost of Time on the millennium eve as it was going out, one of those four billion people, was one Peter Weir - an iconic Australian film director.This is how bizarre the next few years ended up being for me in terms of things just popping out of seemingly nowhere. I was sitting in my studio one day up on the northern beaches and the phone rang. A voice said, "Iva, this is Peter Weir. I'm filming Master and Commander on location in Baja, Mexico. I've fallen in love with The Ghost of Time. I want you to reassemble your team and give me a score like that."The whole experience was incredible, to go to Hollywood. I remember I had a colleague of mine, my music editor, had worked quite a bit in Hollywood on 'Moulin Rouge' and other things. He took me to the Fox lot and was very well recognised, but the thing that became immediately apparent was how incredibly well-respected Peter Weir is in Hollywood. Even though you don't necessarily associate him with massive blockbuster success time and time again, he's respected by directors and quality people in Hollywood and that's the difference.CAROL DUNCAN: Is it difficult to do this sort of work, to create something to someone else's demands?IVA DAVIES: I was very fortunate because Peter Weir has immense respect for music. He said to me not once, but twice, 'Music is the fountainhead of the arts,' that's how important it is to him. But having said that, he uses it very sparingly and in a very subtle way. So I had the great luxury to have three months to work on what equated to, in the end, not much more than 35 minutes worth of music. If you go and see a movie like 'Lord of the Rings', the composers had to write music from end to end of the film, so we're talking two and a half hours of music. Three months to produce that amount of music meant that it could be done with care but at a fairly unstressed pace, as it were. And that was fantastic. I have no doubt that Peter Weir quite deliberately planned the whole thing that way, so that it would be NOT a stressful operation. He's a consummate film-maker and he knows exactly what he's doing, so he schedules and plans things very well.Having said that, I always knew that the brief of a score writer is to write what the director wants to hear, not what the score writer wants to hear, so that was very apparent and so be it. Very often these films are the vision of a director and music is just one component of that. It should feed into their vision.CAROL DUNCAN: What are the professional moments that you hold dearest to your heart?IVA DAVIES: In terms of recording, I had a quite surreal moment. I was very influenced by one Brian Eno who was an absolute pioneer of synthesizers and electronic music, and in fact probably invented the term 'ambient music'. Of course, he was a founding member of Roxy Music but went on later to become incredibly successful in his own right and especially as a producer, he produced almost all of the U2 albums - massive albums. But I'd been following him since he was an early member of Roxy Music and especially been guided by his approach to synthesizers, which was very esoteric and completely at odds with a lot of the nasty noises that were being produced in the 1980s, for example. And I thank him for that because it probably stopped me from making a lot of bad sonic mistakes.The producer I was using at the time was a friend of his and I found myself having a conversation with the producer about the song we were working on at the time - a song called Cross the Border - I had in mind Brian Eno's backing vocal style. I knew that the producer, Rhett Davies, had worked with Brian Eno. I turned up to Air Studios, another very famous studio in London, to do the vocal session and in came Brian Eno. So there was a moment where I was standing in the studio, standing next to Brian Eno who was singing my lyrics and my backing vocal line. That was a real moment for me because he was a real hero of mine.CAROL DUNCAN: At what point did you realise that you had been successful enough to truly pursue anything that you wanted to do?IVA DAVIES: I spent most of my career not quite believing that things would work. In fact, I remember very clearly - we'd been working for years and years, working around these pubs, the first album came out, and I remember the first royalty cheque turned up. The accountant for the management company asked me into the office and said, 'Well, here's the cheque for the Flowers album for you,' and I looked at it and I'd been broke for years. My parents had to keep paying the odd rent payment for me and so on. We weren't earning any money at all, the album had only just come out, and I saw this cheque and it was for $15,000.I looked at Gino, who I had lunch with today - same accountant, and I said, 'Gino. This is amazing. This is incredible. I know I'm just going to fritter this away. I know I'll never get any more money out of this business. What's the deposit on the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest house in Sydney? Well, I bought the cheapest house in Sydney with that deposit, but of course, it wasn't the last cent that I made out of the music business.But for many years, for a long time, I really didn't consider that it was going to last, that I was going to make any money out of it. It's that classic thing where, luckily my parents didn't call me on the phone and say, 'When are you going to get a proper job?' they were very supportive. I think I was the one secretly calling myself and saying, 'When are you going to get a proper job?'CAROL DUNCAN: What are you still learning?IVA DAVIES: I'm still learning technology because unfortunately, it won't sit still! The industry standard for recording is a system called Pro-Tools, you very possibly use it in the studio there and it's certainly in every recording studio in the world. I've been working with Pro-Tools for a very long time but, of course, like any other software, there's a new release of it every five minutes. So I'm actually getting to the stage when I really am going to have to run to catch up! So unfortunately at my age, I'm still having to learn technology because it's the basic tool of my trade and that's never going to stop.CAROL DUNCAN: Are you still as excited by it as you were in the mid-1970s when you and Keith Welsh started 'Flowers' and when you went and harassed your management to allow you to buy that first Fairlight for $32,000?IVA DAVIES: I think I take it a bit more for granted these days because things have exploded in the way that they have. You can imagine the climate in which a piece of technology like the Fairlight came out; it was just mind-numbing. It was unlike anything anybody could ever imagine, whereas I suppose every time there's a new release of Pro-Tools, it's got a couple of lovely new features but it is a development of something which has been around for much more than a decade now.However, having said that, there seems to be a whole new generation of software writers who are incredibly interested in music and incredibly interested in playing with sound, and these are the people who are coming up with all the new noise generating bits - soft synthesisers and all that sort of stuff. That's kind of where the interesting new area is.CAROL DUNCAN: And Keith Welsh has been on this whole journey with you?IVA DAVIES: Indeed. In the music industry the whole time. He and I have been working closely over the past three years and we've started playing again and we re-released the entire catalogue. We put out a compilation called 'White Heat' which is about to go platinum.CAROL DUNCAN: What would you want the young Iva Davies to know?IVA DAVIES: That's a good question! I think I probably did seize most opportunities that came my way so I wouldn't necessarily say, 'just go as fast as you can with every opportunity that you can', I probably would have said, 'Put more attention to the money and where the money is going and who's getting it!' As a forensic accountant, I'm a kind of 'overview guy' as opposed to a 'detail guy'.

Iva Davies is one of Australia's most accomplished musicians and composers with a career spanning over 30 years with his band Icehouse, and as a composer for film and theatre. I produced this feature music show with him in 2014.The number one song on the Australian pop music charts in 1980 was The Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star', accompanied through the year by such gems as Michael Jackson 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough', The Village People 'You Can't Stop The Music', Split Enz 'I Got You', The Vapours 'Turning Japanese' and Queen 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'.In May 1980, Australian radio stations started playing a song by Sydney band, Flowers. 'Can't Help Myself' made it into the Australian Top 10 and was the first song from their debut album, 'Icehouse'. I think I was first in line at my local record store to by the single and was enormously envious of my older brothers who would regularly see Flowers playing at the local pub. IVA DAVIES: We came from quite a distinct stream of music which generated by the punk movement out of Britain, but then it morphed into a strange hybrid because of technology. There was an explosion of technology, especially synthesiser technology, at that period, so we were a kind of punk band with synthesisers which was a bit odd. But clearly, these other people were not, including Michael Jackson! There were all sorts of strange things going on, strange fashions; it was a very interesting time."The first song we put out was called 'Can't Help Myself' and we'd been playing all these classic punk venues for about three years before we put out that first record. I remember being told it had become a disco hit in Melbourne and I was semi-horrified. I was very pleased it was a hit, of course, but a disco hit - we weren't a disco band!By the time we got to 1980 we'd been playing quite a few of our own songs but still had lacings of the odd cover version of things not even particularly fashionable at the time, things like T-Rex songs, but by then we'd really turned into an original band and signed with a small independent label in Sydney called Regular Records and we'd recorded our first album, and although they constitute really the first 10 songs I ever wrote, they did have a certain flavour about them that I guess was, again, a hybrid of punk with synthesizers.CAROL DUNCAN: Iva, you mustn't have been very long out of the Conservatorium by this stage?IVA DAVIES: I dropped out of the (Sydney) Conservatorium when I was about 21, so I was about 23 or 24 by this point.CAROL DUNCAN: So how did you decide to steer your songwriting and music releases in that environment at that time?IVA DAVIES: It's a terrible admission to make considering that 'Can't Help Myself' made it into the Top 10, that I was probably fairly unaware of radio except for 2JJ. That's a terrible admission for somebody who's trying to break into getting airplay on radio!CAROL DUNCAN: Something like The Vapors 'Turning Japanese' would have been all over 2SM (in Sydney) at the time. 2SM would have been the number one commercial pop music station in the late 1970s.IVA DAVIES: Indeed, and I missed a great deal of that. I think we were pretty well buried in our own world and our own world had been dominated by what I'd listened to as I grew up, quite a lot of classics, psychedelic and heavy rock bands including Pink Floyd and so on. And then when Johnny Rotten (the Sex Pistols) arrived, the world was turned upside-down quite literally.He put all of those big bands out of business overnight and London was the place to be. I remember very clearly when Keith (Welsh) and I, our bass player and co-founder of Flowers, we'd been playing almost every night of the week, sometimes nine shows a week. There were clubs all over Sydney, there were clubs all over Melbourne, there were really great bands everywhere and on any given night down the road there'd be Midnight Oil and INXS and any number of bands.When we arrived in London for our very first international tour, we looked at each other and said, 'Let's get a copy of New Musical Express (NME) and go and see a band 'cause this is where it's all coming from!' And there was nothing on!I was absolutely gobsmacked that Sydney was a hundred times more active than London on a club scene. It absolutely mystified me. All the pubs shut early, there was nowhere to go!CAROL DUNCAN: Who did you admire at the time?IVA DAVIES: I didn't buy albums of anybody, I didn't consume music. I was very curious about music but most of what I listened to was via 2JJ. 2JJ was a very progressive station; I think it's been forgotten to some degree. 2JJ were playing things that had been bought on import - they hadn't even been released in Australia yet - and so it was fascinating.We were hearing things we thought before anybody else in the world had heard them, things like Elvis Costello, XTC, mainly British bands but the odd thing coming out of America. There was a real movement of punk and new wave.CAROL DUNCAN: So you and Keith have taken off to London, you're going to see all the bands, but there's no-one home?IVA DAVIES: There's no-one home! I remember thinking at the time, 'Well where did The Cure come from and where did The Clash and The Damned and The Jam come from? Where are they all'?I had imagined that London was heaving with little clubs with all those names playing in them every night but it was really something created through the tyranny of distance, I guess. We had amplified that whole thing that had started with Carnaby Street, The Beatles, and Rolling Stones; and in my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of many other Australians, this was the mecca that we were going to visit. But it turned out it was really as much a product of BBC1 and radio and record companies than it was of an active pub music scene which was exactly what we had in Australia.CAROL DUNCAN: So, what did you do, turn around and come home?IVA DAVIES: We went off touring. We went off touring with Simple Minds who were just starting to break through in Europe. They'd a quite successful album, and we did a reciprocal deal with them where we said, 'OK, if we are your support band in Europe, that will help us, and you come to Australia and be our support band there because nobody knows you. In fact, to this day, and I'm sure Jim Kerr from Simple Minds would take credit in saying that tour we did with them really broke Simple Minds in Australia - it was off the back of that tour that they started achieving success here. Of course, many many albums and many many successes later I still catch up with Jim Kerr quite frequently.CAROL DUNCAN: I remember seeing the two bands at the Manly Vale Hotel.IVA DAVIES: Very possible! That was one of many hotels in that northern beaches area, and I ended up living on the northern beaches by accident. It was quite tribal. There was a very big pub at Narrabeen called the Royal Antler and it was our first proper gig, I guess, and almost residency. At one point we and Midnight Oil were alternating weekends. We never met them, but there was this kind of unspoken rivalry for the same audience of mad, drunken surfies.CAROL DUNCAN: It was one of Sydney's great beer barns.IVA DAVIES: It was and they were mad, of course, mad drunken surfies and probably a few other substances, as well. But they were great nights. It was a big place; I think it held something like 1500 people. And you're right, we probably did attract slightly different audiences, and certainly we also had the other side of us which was playing the inner city hotels which, of course, were very driven by the punk movement, so we'd look out on a place like the Civic Hotel and there'd been a sea of black and safety pins.CAROL DUNCAN: Why did the name change come about? Was it as simple as swapping the band name and album title?IVA DAVIES: It was, but we actually had no choice. What we hadn't realised was that while we were happily going along as Flowers in Australia and New Zealand, as soon as we signed to an international record company and they said, 'We're going to release this around the rest of the world, we need to do a little check on the name. It hadn't even occurred to me that a band name is like a company trading name and, unfortunately, there were at least three other acts around the world trading on the name 'Flowers'. One of them being the very, very famous session bass player, Herbie Flowers, who you probably know best for being the creator of that wonderful bass line that introduces Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side'.So there were objections and we simply had no choice, we had to come up with another name. This has happened to a number of Australian bands. It happened to Sherbet who became Highway, and The Angels who became Angel City. Our logic was fairly simple - people here in Australia and New Zealand only know us by two things, that is the name of the band 'Flowers' or the name of the album 'Icehouse'. So, we became Icehouse.A band name becomes its identity in a far bigger way that just a set of letters. I've had this discussion with my 17-year old son who has got a collection of friends in a band and they haven't been able to think of anything. I keep asking what the band is called and they're called something different every day. I said 'you better get it right because it will end up owning you'.CAROL DUNCAN: Your son has actually played with you?IVA DAVIES: Yes, oh you know about this! I had a fairly mad idea last year, although the idea had been around since 1983. I remember we were touring in Europe and we had a number one song in Europe so there was a lot of pressure on me. I was doing millions of interviews and we were playing very big festivals of 30,000 people.We were playing on one and I was standing on the side of the stage next to my band and Peter Tosh's band was playing - Peter Tosh was the co-founder of Bob Marley's Wailers - and it was a big band, 9 or 10 people on stage, backing singers and whatnot, and I said to my bass player, "See the guy at the back going chukka, chukka, chukka on the guitar, the laziest job in the world? I want his job. I had a conversation last year with somebody about this moment and they said, 'Why don't you do it?'Our manager thought I was mad, a number of promoters thought I was mad, too, but what we did was completely re-invent Icehouse as an eight-piece reggae band. We added some extra guys from Melbourne to give us a brass section and we re-arranged every one of the hits that we'd been playing in the classic repertoire as reggae songs.We put two shows on - one in Melbourne, one in Sydney - as a kind of Christmas party because my feeling was that the reason we were doing it is because reggae makes you want to dance and smile and laugh, and we had the best possible time, it was just fantastic. We've just released the recording of the Sydney show and re-named the band DubHOUSE - the album is DubHOUSE Live.I wanted to get my children to come. My daughter is OK because she's 20 but my son was under age, under the drinking age, and the only way I could get him in was to put him in the band. So I said to him, 'Look Evan ...' he's17 and a very good guitarist, 'I'm sorry, you're not going to get a rehearsal, you're not going to get a sound check. Here's a recording of a rehearsal of Street Cafe done in this style, you've got the guitar solo, go home and learn it and I'll see you on stage."And so the poor guy was thrown on stage with absolutely no preparation whatsoever, but fortunately, he had done his homework and had a great night.CAROL DUNCAN: How do the kids see your career, Iva?IVA DAVIES: Well the strange truth is that they didn't. I finished the last tour that we did back in the day, as it were, when my daughter was six weeks old. Effectively, we didn't play again and my children grew up.In 2009, our long-time tour manager, Larry, who works for a very big audio production company - he'd been working for with us since 1984 - came up with the idea for Sound Relief (concerts held in Sydney & Melbourne for 2009 bushfire relief) and actually volunteered us, so we were the first band on the bill for Sound Relief.By that time in 2009, my daughter would have been 14 or 13, and my son 12 or 13, and that was the first concert they ever saw me play. So they'd grown up all those years not knowing anything about it, or relatively little.CAROL DUNCAN: Did they think Icehouse was cool or were you 'just Dad' and therefore couldn't possibly be cool?IVA DAVIES: Strangely enough, I seem to have breached the cool barrier into the cool area. A very strange thing happened, before that Sound Relief show and before my daughter really got to appreciate my association with it. She came home from school one afternoon, waltzed in the door and announced, 'I LOVE THE EIGHTIES! I love EVERYTHING about the eighties!'Strangely enough, the eighties are going through a whole new generation of cool at the moment. Except for the hair, and a lot of the clothes.CAROL DUNCAN: When you look at that part of your career, the pop/rock part of your career, what do you see, Iva?IVA DAVIES: I'm proud that we worked very hard, I believe, to maintain a kind of class and a quality. That went through everything, even the recordings themselves. I went through the graduation from vinyl to CD, which was a massive turnaround, and it happened incredibly quickly.I remember having a talk to a record company about it and they said, 'Last year we manufactured 80% out of vinyl and 20% out of CD, this year we're manufacturing 80% out of CD and 20% out of vinyl, and the following year we're not making any vinyl at all. That's how fast it turned around. But 'Measure for Measure', our fourth album is one of the first three fully digital recordings ever made in the world, which was a real milestone, so it's the first completely noiseless recording that was made for the new format of CD. It's moments like that that I reflect on and think, well, that's because we really put a lot of care and attention into these things.CAROL DUNCAN: Iva, you're also seen as one of the pioneers in Australia of bringing in synthesizers, computers, the Fairlight and so on. You mentioned an interesting word there, 'noiseless', and that's perhaps where the feud happens between the vinyl purists and people who are very happy to purchase their music in a digital form whether on CD or via digital download. How do you see the vinyl vs CD war when it comes to audio quality?IVA DAVIES: I noted with some amusement touched with horror a program that Linda Mottram did on 702 in Sydney where there was this discussion about vinyl, and she spoke with a so-called expert who was out of a university, and with due respect to that professor I desperately wanted to call in and say, "Can I just tell you about what actually happens when you're making pieces of vinyl and why they sound the way they do, and how it is absolutely possible to make CDs sound exactly like vinyl IF that were the endgame that you wanted to have in mind.I won't go into it now but the fact of the matter is it's all about a process called mastering. The way that tapes, mixes, were mastered for vinyl had to be very particular because of the intolerance of vinyl - vinyl can't carry very much big bass. I found that out with the Flowers album when I insisted to the co-producer that we put lots of bottom end into it and then realised a bit later on when the mastering engineer said to me, "I can't cut this to vinyl, it's got too much bass in it." They're the sorts of mistakes that you make when you're young.I'm a firm believer in anything that doesn't have moving parts and that is digital. I'm afraid I've moved on from anything old-school quite happily.CAROL DUNCAN: Did you call in?IVA DAVIES: No, I didn't, I just thought it's probably too difficult a conversation to have in detail over the radio but it does infuriate me because I'm sure if you got any mastering engineer on to the radio they'd say to you it's mainly because people don't understand how these things are made.CAROL DUNCAN: What gave you the confidence to leap into these new technologies?IVA DAVIES: Perhaps it was more out of ignorance than anything, I certainly didn't see any risk involved, but the main driver for me was that these were new toys. Every time something new was invented, my eyes would light up and I'd think, 'Imagine the possibilities!'I remember expressly that conversation I had with our management where, out of sheer co-incidence they'd moved offices from where they were in Bondi Junction to the top storey of a two-storey building in Rushcutters Bay and the ground storey was where they made Fairlights, believe it or not. Management were oblivious to this, they had no idea what was going on down there. But I did and I came to the managers one day and said, 'I desperately want to get one of these machines, they are amazing.'Of course, I was proven correct because they revolutionised music forever. I think apart from the technology of recording, the sampler - which is what a Fairlight was - was the single most influential piece of technology ever created. I said this to my management, that I was desperate, that I'd really like one, but the catch was they were $32,000. That was in 1981 or 1982 so you can imagine how much money that was then - it was half a small house.But I got one, and interestingly enough my management were quite philosophical about it. They said, 'Well, it's a lot of money, but according to our calculations you'll pay for this with the first two projects you use it on.' And they were right. The first project I used it on was my very first film score for Russell Mulcahy's 'Razorback', which is about 95% Fairlight.The great irony of that was that I kept producing bits of music, because Russell Mulcahy was out in the desert filming scenes and he kept dragging up Peter Gabriel's fourth album, the one with Shock The Monkey on it, and they were out in the desert with this blasting away on a ghetto blaster and I got it into my head that this was what Russell likes. So I kept producing Gabriel-esque soundscapes and so on, and the producers of the movie kept coming back to me and saying, 'No, no no - that's not what we want, we don't want this.' In the end I was getting various clues from them but didn't really know, but I had another go along the lines of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' - a fairly mad piece of classical music. I constructed all this with the Fairlight, it was a quasi-orchestral thing. I took it back to them and they said, 'Yes! That's exactly it!' and I said, 'Well, if you wanted that sort of thing why didn't you go and get a classical composer.'In its day, 'Rite of Spring' was a controversial piece of music, and Iva Davies shares a birthday with Stravinsky.Considering that it was 1913 when that piece first hit the stage for Diaghilev's ballet company. It wasn't just the music; it was actually the subject matter of the ballet that I think was fairly upsetting to a lot of people. It's all about primal sexualism, basically, so you can imagine that to an audience of 1913 that sort of idea was fairly horrifying.CAROL DUNCAN: In 1984, you've got Razorback, also 'Sidewalk' - the third album from Icehouse, at this point did you consider that you didn't actually have to be a pop star?IVA DAVIES: No, I had a very strange life prior to that because I had a completely Jekyll and Hyde existence. I took up the guitar when I was 13, and taught myself, and it was probably also the year that I started taking oboe lessons. I had these two parallel lives and completely separate lives. I had a set of classical people - when I was in high school I played in a wind quintet and we used to rehearse every Saturday morning. We all had our first cars at that point. They were my friends and we went off and won the City of Sydney Eisteddfod and so on. They never, ever met the guys that I was in the acoustic band with. Ever! Because I just had these two lives. So my course was fairly accidental all the way through, it was probably always going to be accidental.To this day, I keep remembering things that I did. I remembered that I was in the orchestra that was primarily made up of members of the Sydney Symphony and the senior Conservatorium orchestra, of which I was a member, for the staging of the two first Australian ballets in the Opera House. I would have been about 19 and, of course, that's a fairly big moment for the Opera House to have a night featuring Australian opera in that building, and I'd completely forgotten about it. There are things from both lives that I've forgotten about.CAROL DUNCAN: 1985, your double life really starts to change as you start working with the Sydney Dance Company.IVA DAVIES: I have to give credit to our managers to some degree who recognised - Ray Hearn was managing us from the beginning. I think he considered himself to be a very erudite individual, he was very widely read, he'd seen every movie possible, and he had a huge record collection. He wasn't a musician but I think he spotted in me the potential that if I kept on that very two-dimension wheel of 'write an album, record an album, tour an album, write an album, record an album, tour an album ...', that I would burn out, that I needed something else to do. So it was he who went and pursued the soundtrack idea with Russell Mulcahy, and it was he who introduced me to the Sydney Dance Company who were a very dangerous company at that point. People forget that they did ballets entirely naked and this was quite revolutionary stuff in its day. They had a very young, hip audience. So it was a very smart move. But it was also a move that was good for the dance company. I had also forgotten until reminded about a month ago that in the Opera House's entire history this has never been repeated, but they did a very dangerous thing. They put two shows on a Friday and a Saturday night, one at a conventional hour and then a whole other audience would turn up at 10.30 at night and we'd do it all again. The staff at the Opera House thought this was going to be an absolute disaster, 'Nobody's going to go to the Opera House at 10.30pm to see a show', but they did and they were all my audience and they were coming to see what all the fuss was about. It was the most successful season the dance company has ever had.CAROL DUNCAN: Were you worried about your pop/rock audience coming over to see what you were doing and being disappointed?IVA DAVIES: I've always utterly failed to understand what the problem is between the various tribes of music. I started of as a bagpipe player when I was six, and although I went through that very, very particular stream of classical musicians, and they are, and they are a very exclusive lot - a lot of them, and they are a very intolerant lot - a lot of them, I think things have improved. But at that time they very much looked down their nose at 'popular music' and rock and roll, but by the same token it was equally prejudiced the other way around. I've never understood why. I don't get that you have to be one or the other but not all of them. In my head, there was absolutely no problem with my audience turning up to the ballet.CAROL DUNCAN: What gave you the confidence to follow both streams?IVA DAVIES: Only because I can kind of speak both languages. I had a discussion with somebody the other night about music and it is another language. It's certainly a language when you read and write it and I learned how to do that. But my dialogue with rock and roll musicians has to be completely different because most of the people I played with all these years don't read and write music. But rock and roll musicians communicate in a different kind of way. So because I'm comfortable in both of those languages, I can happily flick between the two of them, at whim almost.CAROL DUNCAN: Which is why I don't' let my kids drop out of their violin lessons - I want them to have that other language.IVA DAVIES: From my point of view, by miles, the single biggest advantage I've had in my work and succeeding in the broad framework of popular music is the fact that I was highly trained. That is the most sure, certain way to cut every corner you can - to actually know what you're doing.CAROL DUNCAN: December 31, 1999, and Icehouse is performing at the Millennium New Years Eve concert outside the Sydney Opera House and there is a moment on your face where it's just occurred to you how very special that moment is.IVA DAVIES: The penny really didn't drop, I mean, there was such a lot of pressure involved in that. The transmission, the TV director, Greg Beness, had synchronised a whole lot of footage to be running in parallel with shooting the performance. We had backups of backups because, of course, everybody thought that every computer in the world was going to blow up at midnight being the Y2K bug and so on. It was going out to about four billion people. It's not as if you can get to the end of it and go, 'Oh, we mucked that up, can we have another go?', 'Oh, they've already counted down; we're in a new millennium'. So I was incredibly aware of all of that and actually I've watched back some of the footage and it takes me a fair old while to settle down, it's (The Ghost Of Time) a 25-minute piece and it took me a number of minutes before I was, 'OK, we're up and running, everything seems to be working, everybody knows where they are, I can hear everything ....'I got to the end of it and stepped off the stage, Frank Sartor the Lord Mayor of Sydney gave me a glass of champagne, Richard Wilkins counted down from 10 and the fireworks went off directly over my head and I went, 'Wow!'CAROL DUNCAN: From this point, your other career really takes off and you head off to work on Master and Commander.IVA DAVIES: Yes, I've said to other young bands over the years, 'Just be aware - you never know who will be listening,' and so it was with thus that one person who was listening to The Ghost of Time on the millennium eve as it was going out, one of those four billion people, was one Peter Weir - an iconic Australian film director.This is how bizarre the next few years ended up being for me in terms of things just popping out of seemingly nowhere. I was sitting in my studio one day up on the northern beaches and the phone rang. A voice said, "Iva, this is Peter Weir. I'm filming Master and Commander on location in Baja, Mexico. I've fallen in love with The Ghost of Time. I want you to reassemble your team and give me a score like that."The whole experience was incredible, to go to Hollywood. I remember I had a colleague of mine, my music editor, had worked quite a bit in Hollywood on 'Moulin Rouge' and other things. He took me to the Fox lot and was very well recognised, but the thing that became immediately apparent was how incredibly well-respected Peter Weir is in Hollywood. Even though you don't necessarily associate him with massive blockbuster success time and time again, he's respected by directors and quality people in Hollywood and that's the difference.CAROL DUNCAN: Is it difficult to do this sort of work, to create something to someone else's demands?IVA DAVIES: I was very fortunate because Peter Weir has immense respect for music. He said to me not once, but twice, 'Music is the fountainhead of the arts,' that's how important it is to him. But having said that, he uses it very sparingly and in a very subtle way. So I had the great luxury to have three months to work on what equated to, in the end, not much more than 35 minutes worth of music. If you go and see a movie like 'Lord of the Rings', the composers had to write music from end to end of the film, so we're talking two and a half hours of music. Three months to produce that amount of music meant that it could be done with care but at a fairly unstressed pace, as it were. And that was fantastic. I have no doubt that Peter Weir quite deliberately planned the whole thing that way, so that it would be NOT a stressful operation. He's a consummate film-maker and he knows exactly what he's doing, so he schedules and plans things very well.Having said that, I always knew that the brief of a score writer is to write what the director wants to hear, not what the score writer wants to hear, so that was very apparent and so be it. Very often these films are the vision of a director and music is just one component of that. It should feed into their vision.CAROL DUNCAN: What are the professional moments that you hold dearest to your heart?IVA DAVIES: In terms of recording, I had a quite surreal moment. I was very influenced by one Brian Eno who was an absolute pioneer of synthesizers and electronic music, and in fact probably invented the term 'ambient music'. Of course, he was a founding member of Roxy Music but went on later to become incredibly successful in his own right and especially as a producer, he produced almost all of the U2 albums - massive albums. But I'd been following him since he was an early member of Roxy Music and especially been guided by his approach to synthesizers, which was very esoteric and completely at odds with a lot of the nasty noises that were being produced in the 1980s, for example. And I thank him for that because it probably stopped me from making a lot of bad sonic mistakes.The producer I was using at the time was a friend of his and I found myself having a conversation with the producer about the song we were working on at the time - a song called Cross the Border - I had in mind Brian Eno's backing vocal style. I knew that the producer, Rhett Davies, had worked with Brian Eno. I turned up to Air Studios, another very famous studio in London, to do the vocal session and in came Brian Eno. So there was a moment where I was standing in the studio, standing next to Brian Eno who was singing my lyrics and my backing vocal line. That was a real moment for me because he was a real hero of mine.CAROL DUNCAN: At what point did you realise that you had been successful enough to truly pursue anything that you wanted to do?IVA DAVIES: I spent most of my career not quite believing that things would work. In fact, I remember very clearly - we'd been working for years and years, working around these pubs, the first album came out, and I remember the first royalty cheque turned up. The accountant for the management company asked me into the office and said, 'Well, here's the cheque for the Flowers album for you,' and I looked at it and I'd been broke for years. My parents had to keep paying the odd rent payment for me and so on. We weren't earning any money at all, the album had only just come out, and I saw this cheque and it was for $15,000.I looked at Gino, who I had lunch with today - same accountant, and I said, 'Gino. This is amazing. This is incredible. I know I'm just going to fritter this away. I know I'll never get any more money out of this business. What's the deposit on the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest house in Sydney? Well, I bought the cheapest house in Sydney with that deposit, but of course, it wasn't the last cent that I made out of the music business.But for many years, for a long time, I really didn't consider that it was going to last, that I was going to make any money out of it. It's that classic thing where, luckily my parents didn't call me on the phone and say, 'When are you going to get a proper job?' they were very supportive. I think I was the one secretly calling myself and saying, 'When are you going to get a proper job?'CAROL DUNCAN: What are you still learning?IVA DAVIES: I'm still learning technology because unfortunately, it won't sit still! The industry standard for recording is a system called Pro-Tools, you very possibly use it in the studio there and it's certainly in every recording studio in the world. I've been working with Pro-Tools for a very long time but, of course, like any other software, there's a new release of it every five minutes. So I'm actually getting to the stage when I really am going to have to run to catch up! So unfortunately at my age, I'm still having to learn technology because it's the basic tool of my trade and that's never going to stop.CAROL DUNCAN: Are you still as excited by it as you were in the mid-1970s when you and Keith Welsh started 'Flowers' and when you went and harassed your management to allow you to buy that first Fairlight for $32,000?IVA DAVIES: I think I take it a bit more for granted these days because things have exploded in the way that they have. You can imagine the climate in which a piece of technology like the Fairlight came out; it was just mind-numbing. It was unlike anything anybody could ever imagine, whereas I suppose every time there's a new release of Pro-Tools, it's got a couple of lovely new features but it is a development of something which has been around for much more than a decade now.However, having said that, there seems to be a whole new generation of software writers who are incredibly interested in music and incredibly interested in playing with sound, and these are the people who are coming up with all the new noise generating bits - soft synthesisers and all that sort of stuff. That's kind of where the interesting new area is.CAROL DUNCAN: And Keith Welsh has been on this whole journey with you?IVA DAVIES: Indeed. In the music industry the whole time. He and I have been working closely over the past three years and we've started playing again and we re-released the entire catalogue. We put out a compilation called 'White Heat' which is about to go platinum.CAROL DUNCAN: What would you want the young Iva Davies to know?IVA DAVIES: That's a good question! I think I probably did seize most opportunities that came my way so I wouldn't necessarily say, 'just go as fast as you can with every opportunity that you can', I probably would have said, 'Put more attention to the money and where the money is going and who's getting it!' As a forensic accountant, I'm a kind of 'overview guy' as opposed to a 'detail guy'.

Melanie Lane is emerging as a powerhouse of contemporary dance. Based between Melbourne and Berlin, Melanie’s work is diverse and exciting. After studying at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 1999, Melanie moved to Germany as there were increased performance opportunities available in Australia. Melanie has performed with a range of companies and artists worldwide, including Lucy Guerin Inc (interviewed in season two), Kobalt Works, Arco Renz (B), Club Guy and Roni (N), Tino Seghal (G), Antony Hamilton (AUS) and Chunky Move (Aus). Melanie was appointed as resident director at Lucy Guerin Inc, in 2015. In 2016, she was commissioned to develop Re-make at Chunky Move part of their Next Move program and has just been announced as one of the commissioned artists for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed program. I met Melanie after a long day in the rehearsal room, in the lead up to her premiere of Nightdance which explores the night economy; from exotic dance, lap-dancing and club dancing, to examining how complicit the audiences are as voyeurs and consumers.

A podcast for dance lovers, providing inspiration and education on the professional dance industry from the world's best dancers and choreographers.  Episode #14 features Sydney Dance Company studios director Ramon Dorringo. If you love dance and want to know more about how to make dance your career, stay tuned to Ask a dancer.  Hosted by Stacey Morgan, a passionate dance teacher, choreographer and media presenter. Stacey is the Principal of Port Macquarie Performing Arts, a dance studio on the Mid North Coast of NSW, Australia. www.pmperformingarts.com Tweet your questions or guest suggestions to @dancestacey and use the hashtag #askadancer

Gideon Obarzanek is best known for establishing Chunky Move in 1995 in Sydney, subsequently moving to Melbourne in 1997 after winning a tender from the Kennett State Government. Obarzanek hoped that Chunky Move would last at least a year in Melbourne, “so it wouldn’t be so embarrassing”. His desire was to create a space for dancers and choreographers to apply for funding and make work at a time when independent dance was very fringe. “I didn’t have a great interest in having a dance company or directing a dance company, it came out of necessity. […] My interest has always been about making work.” Obarzanek remained the artistic director of Chunky Move until 2012. Obarzanek’s work is diverse, with a focus on collaborations, technology, large-scale events, film and site specific works. His work has toured Europe, Asia, U.K., USA and South America. He has been presented at the Joyce Theatre, BAM Next Wave Festival NY, Dance Theatre Workshop, Venice Biennale, Territoria Festival Moscow as well as all of Australia’s major performing arts festivals. Obarzanek has choreographed works for Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Dance North, Queensland Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre and Opera Australia. Obarzanek has a long list of awards to his name, including winning the prestigious Bessie Award with Lucy Guerin and Michael Kantor for Tense Dave (2005) and Helpmann Awards for Glow and Mortal Engine (2008), Since leaving Chunky Move Obarzanek wrote and directed his first play ‘I Want to Dance Better at Parties’ for Sydney Theatre Company, followed by the screen version in 2013. Obarzanek is currently the Chair of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and an Artistic Associate for Melbourne Festival. In this conversation we discussed dance leadership, gender, inspiration, arts funding, the future of festivals and the vision of Melbourne for being a creative hub. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes including interviews with Alexandre Hamel from Le Patin Libre.

In 2016 Sydney Dance Company and Carriageworks will continue their commitment to emerging choreographers and present the third edition of New Breed. Showcasing a rich diversity of choreographic ideas, Rachel Arianne Ogle (Perth), Shian Law (Melbourne), Jesse Scales (Adelaide) and Richard Cilli (Perth) will create brand new pieces on members of Sydney Dance Company. Don’t miss this limited season of raw talent and fresh ideas from some of Australia’s most exciting dance creators. New Breed is made possible by The Balnaves Foundation.

Rafael Bonachela moved to Australia in 2009 to be the Artistic Director at Sydney Dance Company. He followed Graeme Murphy, who had been at the helm for decades, and took up the role after the tragic death of Tanja Liedtke, who was named as Murphy’s successor. Since his appointment, Rafael has brought the works of a diverse range of leading choreographers to Australia including Alexander Ekman, Adam Linder, William Forsythe, Jacopo Godani and Kenneth Kvarnstrom. While programing the works of Australian choreographers including Larissa McGowan, Stephanie Lake and Gideon Obarzanek. Rafael works with a range of collaborators including with Toni Maticevski, Sarah Blasko, Nick Wales and Katie Noonan. His works includeg 360° C (2008), We Unfold (2009), 6 Breaths (2010), Shared Frequencies (2011), 2 One Another (2012), Les Illuminations (2013), and Lux Tenebris (2016). Rafael has helped instigate a Pre-Professional Year for early-career dancers, as well as focusing on school students to help to develop the next generation of contemporary dance audiences. Before moving to Sydney he ran his own company, the Bonachela Dance Company. Rafael danced for the Rambert Dance Company in 1992, where he developed a strong interest in choreography. This work lead to him choreographing for Kylie Minogue, on the Fever and Showgirl tours. In this conversation we discussed Kylie, dance, leadership, inspiration and arts funding. More information on Sydney Dance Company can be found at www.sydneydancecompany.com Rafael is his own social media celebrity and can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes including interviews with Gideon Obarzanek and Alexandre Hamel from Le Patin Libre.

Luke Smiles has his own IMDB page. He also the composer for Gabrielle Nankivell's smash hit 'Wildebeest' which will be performed alongside Rafael Bonachela’s ‘Anima’ as part of Sydney Dance Company’s ‘Untamed’. 18 – 29 October 2016, Sydney.

Gabrielle Nankivell dyes her hair with beetroot. She is also the choreographer of the smash hit ‘Wildebeest’ which will be performed alongside Rafael Bonachela’s ‘Anima’ as part of Sydney Dance Company’s ‘Untamed’. 18 – 29 October 2016, Sydney.

Those familiar with Melbourne’s independent dance scene will know Stephanie Lake. A dancer and choreographer, Lake’s CV has a long list of credits including Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc. She started dance reasonably late for a woman, and forged a career through her unique physical style. Lake said: “My hair would never go neatly into a bun … I didn’t know any of the ballet language… I think that it can actually be a positive, because you want individual voices in the arts.” Lake continues to push expectations of the form and is known for physically demanding choreography. She was awarded the Australian Dance Award in 2014 for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography, and the Helpmann Award for Best Choreography in Dance or Physical Theatre Work 2014 for A Small Prometheus. Mix Tape (2010) received the Green Room award for Best Choreography. Her work has toured to Germany, France, Ireland, Denmark, Singapore and Australia with a range of work including : Mix Tape; AORTA; Dual; Double Blind and If I Was. She now spends the majority of her time as a choreographer and a mother of two children, but is still dancing and continually finding a balancing between all of her passions and the responsibilities of motherhood. Lake has been commissioned by Sydney Dance Company, Chunky Move, Dance North, Tasdance, Stompin, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Frontier Danceland (Singapore). We met in the noisy foyer of the Malthouse early on a cold Melbourne morning, before she was starting a new development, in the pipeline for 2017. Our conversation moved from discussions of process, motivation, goals and children. We started talking about moving from a career primarily dancing to one of choreography. Stephanie Lake early in to her choreographic career is set to make her mark as a prominent Australian choreographer. If you have enjoyed this discussion share it with a friend. Stay tuned for another stimulating episode. We will be hitting the web in two weeks time as we continue to explore the world of dance, with interviews from Deborah Jowett, Joshua Pether, Gideon Obarzanek and Rafael Bonachela in the pipeline. “I get so nervous going in to rehearsal … I have these fantasies about jobs where you are not witnessed”

Laurent spoke to award winning dancer CHARMENE YAP, a member of Sydney Dance Company and performer in the touring production CounterMove. CounterMove will be performed at the Melbourne Theatre Company Southbank Theatre 25th May to 4th June Photography by Peter Greig (still from CACTI)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Laurent spoke to award winning dancer CHARMENE YAP, a member of Sydney Dance Company and performer in the touring production CounterMove. CounterMove will be performed at the Melbourne Theatre Company Southbank Theatre 25th May to 4th June Photography by Peter Greig (still from CACTI)

Host, Laura Theodore, the Jazzy Vegetarian,  chats with Lance Horne who is an Emmy Award winning composer, lyricist, singer, pianist, producer and music director. We’ll chat about his  CD, "First Things Last," and share some recipes and views on vegetarian food! Mr. Horne writes in various genres such as musical theater, rock, classical, film and broadcast television. Mr. Horne received a 2008 Daytime Emmy for Best Original Song (“Chemistry,” One Life to Live), 2010 Bistro for Best Album (Alan Cumming), 2006 Jonathan Larson Award (composer-lyricist), and multiple ASCAP Young Composer/Member Awards. His CD, "First Things Last," is his debut recording bridging pop, rock, theater and jazz. The CD features stage and screen stars such as Alan Cumming, Cheyenne Jackson, Ricki Lake, and more. Lance served as a musical consultant for the film Burlesque, starring Christina Aguilera and Cher. He co-produced Alan Cumming’s album I Bought A Blue Car Today and has served as Music Director for the NBC Orchestra and performances with Sandra Bernhard, Sydney Dance Company, the Boston Pops, Atlanta Symphony,  Adam Lambert, Ann Hampton Callaway and the New York Pops. Lance has been heard at Carnegie Hall, American Opera Projects, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, and at Sydney Opera House. He holds a Bachelors and Masters in Music Composition from The Juilliard School and has provided arrangements for the Boston Pops and the Broadway production of Little Women. His opera, Three Lost Chords, was praised in The New York Times when it debuted at New York’s Zipper Theater in 2008. In 2009 Ourboros, his classical composition for flute and piano, debuted at Zankel Hall. Horne is serving as Music Director for the workshop Alice By Heart, the new musical from Spring Awakening Tony Award-winners Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater.