We’re excited to announce LGI’s 2025 cohort of Make a Start Residents.
The Make a Start program provides 1- to 2-week in-studio residencies, for artists to explore new ideas or initiate early-stage developments. Participants have the opportunity to experiment, take creative risks, and push their practices into uncharted territory.
Amber McCartney – Hair Piece
Hair Piece is a duet choreographed by Amber McCartney in collaboration with Jenni Large. The work features two complete coverage, removable hair suits, gently differing in tones. Two dancers roll in a hairball-like cluster of confusion. During this Make a Start residency, Amber and Jenni will dive deeply into their shared practice of ‘slug gymnastics’, a disturbed, amoebic entanglement of strength and flexibility to form undulating clumps.
Audrey Goth-Towney – Advance Australia
In Advance Australia, Audrey will use Australia’s national anthem as a vessel to channel a modern, first-nation perspective on our country.
“Australians let us all rejoice. For we are young and free… Our national anthem reflects the irony of our entire colony. We say we are young, yet we host the oldest living culture on earth. We say we are free, but our women are scared to walk at night and our youth are jailed. The national anthem will serve as the inspiration and musical score to my piece. The anthem to me seems to create images of a golden age I never knew and perhaps never even really existed.” – Audrey Goth-Towney.
Siobhan McKenna and Helen Svoboda – Chamber
The first development in a new live performance work titled Chamber marks the beginning of a brand-new collaboration between sound artist Helen Svoboda and dance artist Siobhan McKenna. Chamber embarks upon an immersive dramatisation of the mouth. It works from the inside out, exploring the entwinement of these everyday oral sounds and their embodied movements, and how they may be exaggerated and amplified to craft a live soundtrack. Here, the voice becomes a tool for expanding the body beyond its physical edges, and the mouth becomes a passageway to link the internal to the external; a vessel through which many elements pass such as breath, song, materials, speech and emotion.
Jayden Wall – bound 2
Following a successful season of Flesh Vessel in 2024, Jayden will use this Make a Start residency to further develop and expand upon a short section of the work which involved the use of detailed floor-work and pick-up mics attached to tarkett. These microphones will pick up specifically crafted movement, creating a live sound design in the performance.
Swaroopa Unni– Amma (working title)
Amma will delve into the complex, multifaceted experience of motherhood, unravelling its contradictions and emotional depth. It will illuminate the profound psychological and emotional toll of the idealised image of motherhood — a version of selflessness, nurturing, and perfection that society often demands of women. Beneath this surface lies a deeper, quieter struggle with personal identity, mental health, and the constant pressure to conform to unrealistic expectations. In this solo dance project, Swaroopa will be incorporating the movement vocabulary of Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam, two traditional South Indian dance forms.
Piaera Lauritz – This is Our Apocalypse
A new project for two dancers, This is Our Apocalypse explores the conflict between humanity’s self-destructive tendencies and the power of care and community. The work will touch on the perceived futility of activist efforts to make real, lasting social change, and the dangers of apathy. The initial outcome from this residency will be a short dance film, captured in Melbourne at the end of January 2024 by photographer James Lauritz.
Sharvon Mortimer & Oli Mathiesen – Skkip
Skkip is a large-scale, site-specific dance theatre duet, and installation in and around a skip bin which plays on the word’s multiple meanings; a light bounding step, to pass over without notice or mention, an open container for waste.
“We are interested in the dichotomy of ‘skip’ being a child-like buoyant movement and its physical object an industrial, often rusty, sometimes pungent mental gargantuan. The object itself, and watching bodies encounter it already yields strong connotations. A bin is a bin at the end of the day and there are pre-conceived assumptions of what exists inside. The expectation or assumption of something in comparison to the reality of what is in front of you is a space we are interested in exploring and will lean into the collision and morphing of double meanings and pre-conceived ideas.” – Sharvon Mortimer & Oli Mathiesen
The Newmarket Collective – The Visceral Dance Experience Project (working title)
The Newmarket Collective comprises Kylie Davies and Guus Hoevenaars (musicians and sound artists), Mike Tudorowski (sound engineer), and Madeline Harms (dance artist and choreographer). During this residency, the Collective will explore Vibrotextile™ technology, through the lens of dance. Developed by Music: Not Impossible (USA), Vibrotextile™ haptic suits feature wearable vibrotactile components, including a body pack, wristbands, and ankle bands, with 24 touch points across the body. The Collective will investigate how wearing the vests can shape and inform a distinctive movement language, responding directly to the physical vibrations of sound transmitted through the touch points. The exploration centres on a sensory loop: how sound generates vibrations, how vibrations influence movement, how movement takes form visually, and, ultimately, how these elements shape the audience’s experience when engaging with the vests themselves.
The Unguided – The Unguided
The Unguided is a Hip-hop freestyle crew formed in May 2024, currently consisting of five members: David Prakash, Oliver Le, Jimmy Nguyen, Mario Cheung, and Efren Pamilacan. During this residency, the crew will reflect on and deepen their collective Hip-hop freestyle practice, focusing on four key areas: history, dance (including floorwork, Krump, Waves, and Tracing), sound, and fashion.