In light of today’s advice from Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, please note the Keir Choreographic Award Public Program will proceed based on a planned attendance of 200. We continue to pay close attention to the advice of NSW Government Health to ensure we follow rigorous preventative measures and positive hygiene practices.

As creative practitioners do we have responsibilities, and to whom/what?
Who sets boundaries and to what extent should we abide?
When do we notice that boundaries are broken, and what are the indicators?
Is it necessary to not only push boundaries but to break them in order for the Arts to continuously grow?

This panel of distinguished First Nations creative panelists from Dance, explore the horizons of Boundaries and what extent Our people, Our Culture, Our audience allow us to question, explore, replace once-accepted boundaries.

With Merindah Donnelly, Victoria Hunt, Marilyn Miller, Latai Taumoepeau, Kilia Tipa and Vicki Van Hout.

About Merindah Donnelly:
Merindah Donnelly is a mother, partner and proud Wiradjuri woman living in Meanjin, Queensland. Merindah is currently Executive Producer BlakDance, the national service organisation and producing house of First Nations contemporary dance. Merindah trained for as a professional dancer, has worked in Market Development at the Australia Council for the Arts and as creative producer for ISEA; International Symposium of Electronic Art, APAM 2014, National Indigenous Theatre Forum 2015 and National Indigenous Dance Forum 2017. In 2015 Merindah was a global International Society of Performing Arts fellow (ISPA) and managed the Industry Series for the Talking Stick festival in Vancouver. In 2016 Merindah became a part of the Tri-Nations Canadian, New Zealand and Australian performing arts Indigenous collective. In 2017 Merindah commenced a Masters in Cultural Leadership at NIDA, and in 2018 she co-founded the First Nations Dialogues New York which established a permanent First Nations program at Performance Space New York. In 2018 she was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship. In 2020 Merindah is on the curatorial committee for APAM AsiaTOPA and Darwin Festival, an Australia Council ISPA fellow and is a guest curator for the Talking Stick Festival Vancouver.

About Vicki Van Hout:
Vicki Van Hout is a Wirradjerri woman born in Wollongong on the NSW south coast – and a senior interdisciplinary indigenous performer/performance maker who uses dance as an entry point to explore other fields including spoken word and song. Vicki Van Hout trained at the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) and the prestigious The Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York. She has performed with and choreographed for major Australian Indigenous dance companies – Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre – and independent artists, including Tess de Quincey, Martin del Amo and Hans Van den Broeck (Belgium). She has created eight full-length works, including plenty serious TALK TALK Long Grass, Briwyant and My Right Foot Your Right Food. Directed Stolen (Jane Harrison) for National Theatre of Parramatta (2016), created Les Festivities Lubrifier for Performance Space’s Liveworks program (2015) and has been awarded several international residencies including Cite des Arts residency (Paris, 2015). In 2019, she was awarded the Australia Council Award for Dance.

About Victoria Hunt:
Victoria Hunt is an Australian-born artist working across the spheres of dance, choreography, culture, performance art and education. Her tribal affiliations are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu Maori, English and Irish. She has a BA in Visual Arts (Maj. Photo-media) from Griffith Uni, QLD ‘97. She is a founding ensemble member of the Bodyweather dance company De Quincey Co. since 1999 and in 2007 became a co-curator of The Weather Exchange. Victoria has toured internationally with New Zealand dance company MAU directed by Lemi Ponifasio, in REQUIEM at LIFT – London International Festival of Theatre (Lon/UK) 2007, New Crown Hope Festival (Vienna/AUS), KVS Theatre season (Brussels/BE), Pasifika Festival, Aotea Theatre (Auckland/NZ) 2006 and Sky City Theatre (Auckland/NZ) 2006. In 2010 Victoria and Fiona Winning created Dancing the Dead: A Performed Conversation as part of two festivals, LiveWorks at Performance Space and Inbetween Time Festival in Bristol/UK. Her solo work, Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka, was presented at Performance Space in 2012. In 2013 Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka dance solo was commission by ORIGINS – Festival of First Nations and presented at The Place, London. Victoria was further commissioned by the Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research, Royal Holloway, University of London to present Day of Invigilation, a durational gallery performance and a new video work Tangi, in collaboration with Boris Bagattini and James Brown as part of the exhibition Ecocentrix: Indigenous Arts, Sustainable Acts, Southbank, London.

About Marilyn Miller:

Marilyn is of Kukuyalanji / Waanyi heritage and was born in Cairns and spent most of her life and career in the arts in Sydney, co-founding Australia’s first contemporary Indigenous dance company AIDT- the Company, in the early 1990s. She is the founder of BlakDance Australia and sits on the BlakDance Cultural Council.  Marilyn has held positions as Artistic Associate and Board Member – Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), Creative Producer, Yirrama Yaanga-na (2016),  Festival Director –  Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival (LADF), Artistic Director,-  Australian Delegation – Festival of Pacific Arts 2012 (Solomon Islands),  Creative Producer- 2008 Opening of Parliament–Welcome to Country. Artistic Director, Kooemba-Jdarra Performing Arts Company. She currently works with Healing in Action – Granny’s Yarns, as a life coach/counsellor with children in out-of-home care, and single mothers. Marilyn represented Indigenous dance internationally in 2019 at the First Nations Performing Arts Dialogue ,New York and then at the Moshkamo Festival First Nations Forum, Ottawa.

About Latai Taumoepeau:
Latai Taumoepeau is a Punake, body-centered performance artist; her story is of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga and her birthplace; the Eora Nation – Sydney, and everything far and in-between. She mimicked, trained and un-learned dance, in multiple institutions of knowledge, starting with her village, a suburban church hall, nightclubs and a university. Latai activates Indigenous philosophies and methodologies; cross-pollinating ancient practices of ceremony with her contemporary processes & performance work to re-interpret, re-generate and extend her movement practice and its function in and from Oceania. She engages in the socio-political landscape of Australia with sensibilities in race, class & the female body politic; committed to bringing the voice of marginalised communities to the frangipani-less fore ground.

About Kilia Tipa:
Kilia is a Western Sydney based Fakaleiti artist, with a movement-based practice focusing on queer belonging and cultural performativity.

L.Taumoepeau & E.Nohra, Thy Kingdom Comes, 24 Frames Per Second, Carriageworks, Image Victoria Hunt 2015