Host
Michael Veitch
Michael Veitch is a multi-talented writer, performer, presenter and comedian. He has an academic background in history but along the way has made some history of his own becoming one of the most experienced and successful talents working in Australian Comedy. Exploding onto the scene as a member of ABC’s cult classic The-D Generation, Michael went on to become a popular star of TV’s Fast Forward, Full Frontal and more recently the international comedy drama Shock Jock.
Michael has performed at the highest level on stage working for the Melbourne Theatre Company, as well as in film starring opposite Anthony Lapaglia in David Williamson’s Brilliant Lies. He has also spent several years on radio, both commercial and ABC, including a long stint on Jon Faine’s daily
Conversation Hour.
Michael is currently the host of ABC TV’s Sunday Arts Program.
Performances
The Australian Ballet
The Australian Ballet was founded in 1962. It is one of Australia’s best known and most successful arts organisations.
The company presents a broad range of repertoire, honouring the traditions of ballet as well as exploring its future. At every level of the organisation, tradition and innovation go hand in hand. The Australian Ballet performs nationally, including regionally, in Australia, and has a long history of successful, high-profile international touring. It is an ambassador for Australian culture on the world stage, and a passionate advocate for the arts.
Chunky Move
Founded by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek in 1995, Chunky Move has earned an enviable reputation for producing a distinct yet unpredictable brand of genre-defying dance performance.
Chunky Move’s work constantly seeks to redefine what is or what can be contemporary dance within an ever-evolving Australian culture. The company’s work is both diverse in form and content; to date the Company has created a number of works for the stage, site specific and new-media and installation work.
Chunky Move’s multi-tiered programming initiatives foster and support a strong and vibrant dance culture in its home city of Melbourne and also creates critically acclaimed and popular larger productions for touring. Recent international engagements include: China, Poland, Japan, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Belgium, and Hungary.
Our current works include: Mortal Engine, Glow, I Want to Dance Better at Parties, Singularity, Tense Dave, Three’s A Crowd and Wanted: ballet for a contemporary democracy.
Most recently, Obarzanek’s film, Dance Like Your Old Man, co-directed with Edwina Throsby won best short documentary at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival, and in collaboration with Lucy Guerin and Michael Kantor, he has also received a New York Bessie award for Outstanding Choreography/Creation for Tense Dave (Sydney Festival 2004). Other awards include two Melbourne Green Room Awards for I Want To Dance Better At Parties (Sydney Festival 2006), a Mo Award for Best Choreography for Bonehead and the Prime Minister’s Young Creative Fellowship in 1996.
Dancenorth
Dancenorth is an exciting and athletic dance company under the directorship of Gavin Webber. Influenced by his years with Wim Vandekybus and Meryl Tankard, the company works with a spirit of collaboration and co-production, and has become Australia's fastest growing contemporary dance company.
Dancenorth, based in Townsville, North Queensland, has co-produced two dance theatre works with Brisbane Powerhouse and Sasha Waltz & Guests, choreographed by the collaborative ensemble Splintergroup.
The company employs a core group of dancers and engages national and international guest artists and designers for each production. It has four touring productions in its repertoire: lawn, Underground, roadkill and Nightcafe. lawn was nominated for two Helpman Awards in 2007 and opened Tanzplattform 2006 in Stuttgart. In 2007, roadkill was part of Dance Umbrella and BITE Festival at the Barbican Centre, London. Underground will tour Australia in 2008. Nightcafe is a party where everyone's invited by blending cabaret and dance theatre with high energy gypsy music. In the past two years, the company has toured around Australia, as well as to London, Berlin, Stuggart, Heilbronn, Freiburg, Yokohama and Singapore.
Dancenorth continues to create and produce extraordinary new Australian works - the latest being Remember Me, which will premiere on 8 July 2008, that will merge film, dance, theatre and live music composed by Iain Grandage to produce a work of great tenderness and nostalgia.
Ros Warby
ROS WARBY is one of Australia's leading dancer/choreographers. She has been creating and performing solo dance since 1990 and her award winning work has been presented in Australia, Europe and the USA. Warby has also performed with numerous companies and artists including Dance Works, Dance Exchange, Lucy Guerin Inc. and the Deborah Hay Company.
Recognised for her unique performance work, the solo dances Warby creates invoke characters that often transcend archetypes by sliding between iconic figures and ideas, allowing the body to suggest the complex experience of a human being at any one moment.
The creation of her work has benefited from the rapor she has nurtured with her creative team, designer Margie Medlin and composer Helen Mountfort. With Warby they create an elaborate interplay between the elements of dance, film, sound and light, and craft a dialogue between these forms, where they coexist in a manner rarely achieved in multi-disciplinary work. Warby has received the Robert Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer 2007 (Monumental), Greenroom Awards for Best female performer in 2000 & 2007 (Monumental) and best Solo performer in 2001 (SOLOS), the Age Critics Commendation Award 2006 (Monumental), an Australia Council Fellowship (2002 2004), and the 2007 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award.
Her critically acclaimed works SOLOS and SWIFT have toured extensively including Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, USA; South Bank Centre, London; Dance Theatre Workshop, NYC; and Londons Dance Umbrella. Her most recent work, Monumental, premiered at the 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival and will tour the US in early 2009. Warby and Medlins cinematic version of SWIFT was televised in 2007 on ABC and has been screened at international festivals worldwide.
Born in Sydney in 1967, Warby trained in Europe with Marika Besobrasova, Monte Carlo, Central School of Ballet, London, and the Royal Danish Ballet School, The European Dance Development Centre with Eva Karczag, Netherlands, and Lisa Nelson, Dana Reitz, and Deborah Hay USA.