We’re thrilled to announce the three choreographers creating new work for PIECES 2022—Melanie Lane, Amber McCartney and Rachael Wisby.

Presented by Lucy Guerin Inc and The Substation, PIECES is an annual performance program offering choreographers the opportunity to make 20-minute works that premiere in a season at The Substation.

PIECES 2022 runs 14-17 December 2022, and you can purchase tickets via The Substation here.

Melanie Lane

Melanie Lane stands in front of a wall of ivy. She has long dark hair swept to one side, and she is wearing bright red lipstick.

Melanie Lane is a choreographer and performer working between Naarm/Melbourne and Ngunnawal/Canberra. She works across visual arts, theatre, music and film. Her choreographic work interrogates physical and social realities to create surreal futures that are confounded, broken and reconfigured. She has been commissioned by Sydney Dance Company, Australasian Dance Collective, Dance North, Chunky Move, Schauspiel Leipzig and West Australian Ballet (among others) and has toured her independent work internationally. Her collaborations include projects with UK musician CLARK, Adena Jacobs, Amos Gebhardt, Leyla Stevens and Monica Lim. As a performer, Lane has worked with artists such as Tino Seghal, Arco Renz, Eun Me Ahn, Club Guy and Roni, Antony Hamilton and Lucy Guerin. Melanie was the 2015 Resident Director at Lucy Guerin Inc, is Resident Artist at The Substation, Melbourne and Associate Artist at QL2 Canberra.

Image credit: Barbara Dietl

Amber McCartney

Dance Amber McCartney is standing under an urban bridge at dusk. The camera has over exposed and there is a smidge of blue light across half of the picture.

Amber McCartney is a Naarm/Melbourne-based dancer and choreographer. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012, Amber has worked extensively for Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc and is a creative associate of Tasdance. She has performed for Dancenorth and Antony Hamilton Projects as well as independent choreographers and multidisciplinary artists including Jenni Large, Prue Lang, Jo Lloyd, James Batchelor, Su Huiyu, Kyall Shanks, Jonathan Homsey and Niharika Senapati. In 2020, Amber was a recipient of Solitude 1, Chunky Move’s home-based residency program and created her film Softtrap for the 2021 Activators program. She has presented solo work for Tasdance, Lucy Guerin Inc’s PIECES and Dancehouse’s Now Pieces, and has created for YellowWheel and Transit Dance. This year Amber won a Green Room Award for Best Performer in Prue Lang’s Project F.

Image credit: Sam Wong

Rachael Wisby

A close up of Rachael Wisby's face. She has cropped brown hair, and she is looking directly at us.

Rachael Wisby (she/her) is a physical artist who lives and works in Naarm on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people. Rachael graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. She has enjoyed learning from many bodies, including that of Lee Serle, Jo Lloyd, Phillip Adams, Geoffrey Watson, Jenny Kinder, Feng Feng Wang and Natalie Abbott. Rachael is a student of the body and studies Traditional Chinese Medicine. Rachael’s artistic practice articulates a desire for physical action. She proposes this as an undermining of the body-mind dichotomy. She makes performance-based, body-derived work that manifests as self-generating choreographic systems. She is most concerned with the fabricated, the fantasised and the fictitious body, and practices of body and earth healing.

Image credit: Sanjeev Singh

With thanks to the continued support of PIECES from City of Melbourne.