DANscienCE: Moving Well In New South Wales

DANscienCE: Moving Well
Our eclectic team of writers from around Australia – and a couple beyond – with decades of combined experience and interest in all fields.

DANscienCE Moving Well discovers something of a crossover between dance and science in the fields of health, wellbeing and longevity.


The one-day event will feature a selection of performances, films and talks. Director and Curator Liz Lea reveals more.

Tell us a little bit about DANscienCE Moving Well.
The event is aimed at bringing together some of the leading minds in the fields of dance and science, and to be asking the question: Are we moving well? Mental, physical and emotional wellbeing are considered from a practical and scientific perspective. We have speakers covering professional dance, community dance, children and ageing well through movement.

This is a one-day-only event! What were some of the challenges and – on the flipside – rewards of curating it?
Bringing so many speakers of this calibre together in one day means we are jam-packed! Ensuring everyone’s research and experiences are well represented while also enabling a really exciting and insightful event is our main aim and challenge. Everyone is very excited to be participating and working around each other. It has been great working with the FORM Dance Projects and Riverside teams on this.

Why is an event like DANscienCE Moving Well important?
When I began curating DANscienCE in 2013 I did not know a great deal about the world of dance and science. I found, though, that there are many artists and scientists who have been talking and working together for years. It may seem like an unlikely partnering, but it is perfect. As dancers we are training and working with our bodies, minds and psyches to a uniquely detailed degree. When this approach is connected with scientists there are many levels of connections and each area can advance the other. Enabling the two fields to meet and inform each other is one of the great joys of DANscienCE, as is hearing the incredible research that has been undertaken quietly over the years.

There's a performance by an 103-year-old dance legend! Any hints on what to expect in that?
Eileen Kramer is a legend of course and she has been working with the incredible Sue Healey. Sue has created a series of films of Eileen – one of which was at the National Portrait Gallery – and she will be re-creating a beautiful moment for us at DANscienCE Moving Well, along with showing of others of her films.

It's a little deeper than just dance. This festival digs deep into things like health and well-being. Have you ever been involved with anything like this before?
The event has been built around an in-depth research base into the science of moving and the mind. It is absolutely more than dance, which in itself can be very deep. It has been very interesting to focus on health and wellbeing rather than a wider range of dance and science such as ecology, travel and history. In the process we have discovered a number of new speakers and the passionate approach people have been taking in this area for some time. There is also a growing awareness of how dance can and does assist people in their everyday lives, so the event is very timely. This is the third DANscienCE I have curated. Previously we have presented at CSIRO Discovery in Canberra and then at QUT in Brisbane. Bringing the event to Parramatta and a new team is exciting!

What do you think audiences will love about it?
We have a very varied programme – talks range from movement in babies to performances by elders and Eileen’s performance. We have some of Australia’s leading minds speaking and sharing, as well as guests flying in from the USA and UK. Questions of self-care align with dancing and living with a disability and more. This kind of variety when presented by experienced and new presenters means there will never be a dull moment!

There is a lot of different speakers from around the country and the world. What was the process in terms of picking them?
We have invited some speakers to join us, and some of them are part of the DANscienCE family. It is exciting to see how their research has developed over the past six years. We also put out a call for expressions of interest and people submitted their papers, performance ideas and presentations. We had to make some difficult choices as we needed to align everything into one day, so we could not invite everyone to speak.

In a perfect world, what will DANscienCE Moving Well attendees leave this event thinking and feeling?
We hope they will leave enlightened, challenged and inspired. Inspired to reach out to each other and to other areas in the world of health and movement. We have programmed performances and film that inform, engage and make audiences laugh or feel moved. Just as we should be moving – feeling well.

Sell the event to us in a sentence.
Join us for a day of talks, films and performances that will engage, intrigue and delight!

DANscienCE Moving Well takes place at Riverside Theatres on 2 June.

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