BECAUSE OF GRAVITY
BECAUSE OF GRAVITY
Teaching & Facilitation
Youth & Community Projects
Theatre / Film / Digital /Music
TEACHING & FACILITATION
TEACHING & FACILITATION
Performance & Research
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ABOUT
I am a multi-faceted Choreographic and Dance Artist, Director, Creative, Performer, Mentor, Facilitator, Producer and Curator with a 25 year international portfolio of work.
From multiple major and urgent works with the renowned Belarus Free Theatre, to the award winning Ukrainian documentary 'Iron Butterflies', to the multi-modal and interdisciplinary international collaboration 'They Gather', to grassroots youth and community driven projects, my work reaches people across a breadth of scopes and scales.
I acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, and to Elders past and present.
BIOGRAPHY
I am a multi-faceted artist working in directorial, collaborative, producing/curation, facilitation, and mentoring roles.
With a 25-year international portfolio career, I create and collaborates on dance, theatre, performance, interdisciplinary, film, moving-image, music, visual art, digital and participatory projects, works, and events.
Recent credits from my portfolio includes:
Since 2012, Choreographic, Movement and Rehearsal Director and International Researcher with Belarus Free Theatre, including on the New York Times listed 'Best Theatre of 2017' and 'Off West End' award winning production 'Burning Doors' with Pussy Riot’s Maria Alokhyna, 'Trustees' (Malthouse and Melbourne International Festival), 'Counting Sheep: Staging A Revolution' (VAULT Festival London 2019 headline production), 'Trash Cuisine', 'Red Forest' and more, touring the UK, Europe, North America and Australia.
Choreographer and Performer for, 'Iron Butterflies’, a hybrid documentary about the downing of flight MH17. World Premiere Sundance World Documentary Competition 2023, European Premiere Berlin International Film Festival 2023, Winner RIGHTS NOW! Main Prize at Docudays 2023 (UA), and screening at festivals around the world.
Co-Creator, Co-Director, Co-Choreographer and Co-Producer of 'They Gather', an independent multi-year, international, multi-modal interdisciplinary project reaching audiences in cultural, festival, public and digital spaces in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands.
Choreographic Artist on 'The Word' St Martins’ most artistically ambitious work to date that brings together an ensemble of eleven young, diverse performers with a cohort of established practitioners.
Co-creator with Ukrainian Film Artist Roman Liubyi on 'The Correspondents', a moving image research project, produced by Babylon'13 (UA) and Project Auske (UK), and supported by the European Union under the House of Europe.
Co-Artistic Director with Wahab Shah on the UK/Pakistan collaboration project ‘On The Hour: Dance Kahanyan’, supported through The British Council's ‘New Perspectives’ project.
Movement Director and Director on research and development of 'The Bell Curves', a new play by writer Keisha Thompson.
I have also received commissions from: the EU consortium Creative Europe funded consortia BeSpectACTive! (for the project 'YES Move. NO Move. (Moved?)', Illuminating York (for 'The Ice, the Land and the Sea', FISKE & CROFTS), moves - International Festival of Movement of Screen and the Watching Dance Project (for 'Red Rain', including presentation in Liverpool Biennial), Moving Dance Forward (Dance Manchester, MDI, Contact, The Lowry, University of Salford, Unity Theatre), University of Salford, TURN Prize (Dance Manchester, hAb, greenroom for The GEF House Experiment), and Dance Manchester and the Science Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub (SEERIH) at the University of Manchester (to collaborate with leading British Astrophysicists).
As a self-organising, collaborating and engaged artist, I have presented work at venues, initiatives and festivals that includes: The Lowry, 'Dance Sampled' (by The Movement - a Sadler’s Wells, Birmingham Hippodrome and The Lowry partnership), The Future (a The Lowry and Rambert partnership), The Place and Chisenhale Dance, Rewire International Music Festival, Modern Body Laboratory, Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance, Urban Moves International Dance Festival, Mintfest, Manchester Day, Teatro La Fenice (Venice, IT), MediaCityUK with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Queensland Arts Gallery, Dance24 (Metro Arts and Studio1) and more.
As a performer and collaborator I have worked with: Buzz Dance Theatre (company dancer performing works by Paige Gordon, Carol Wellman Kelly and Felicity Bott), Joseph Lau (including in the TURN Prize winning work 'Abandoned Things), Cheryl Stock, Helen Sky and Sarah Rubidge on 'Accented Body (Brisbane International Festival), imitating the dog (touring cast to Cena Brasil Interncional), Louise Deleur, Tarcisio Teatini-Climaco, Kristen Bell, Xanthe Beesely, Wendy Wallace, and Rosetta Cook.
I have undertaken roles in advocacy, development, producing, curation, fundraising, project management, coordination and arts administration including with: Contact, Manchester Dance Consortium (Manchester Choreoab 2017), North West Dance Artist Led for Artists Network and Dance Consortia North West, Vanhulle Dance Theatre (Trustee), Dance Manchester, Rio Rhythmics Latin Dance Academy, Director/Producer Cheryl Stock on 'Accented Body', and Ausdance QLD.
I also have an extensive portfolio in teaching and mentoring in community, education, prevocational training, and professional contexts, with e.g. Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Phluxus2, The Lowry Centre for Advanced Training, The Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Roehampton University, Queensland University of Technology, The Place, University of Salford, University of Central Lancashire, HWY Festival La Boite Theatre Company, Dancenorth Australia, Expressions Dance Company (now Australian Dance Collective), MAD Dance House, Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre and more.
Practices
As an international artist, and via my dual identity as both an Australian and British citizen, I aim to make meaningful contributions to both countries. I also aim to contribute wider internationally via partnership building and collaborations with artists, communities, change-makers, producers, curators, advocates, and organisations.
My practices engage closely with people and organisations to generate strategies for empowerment and change-making that are specific and meaningful to the people, and the environment the work impacts.
Background. Education. Training
I was born and grew up on farms and in small towns in rural Victoria, Australia. Places that are on the ancestral lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung People and Yorta Yorta People.
After training with Jacqueline Kornmann and Susan Eacott, being given opportunities to take on creative and leadership roles in my community, and many trips to Naarm (Melbourne) to extend my skills, I boarded a Greyhound bus in early 1997 and traveled the 24 hours to Meeanjin (Brisbane). Here I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Dance) at Queensland University of Technology.
In 2001 I returned to full-time studies and completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours). During this post-graduate year, I completed a practice as research project and thesis with a focus on solo performance. Through this process, I worked with Nik Hills on the solo ‘Holding The Baby’, Cath Childs on the solo ‘For Lease’, and created the solo ‘In Blood’.
In 2020-2021, I completed coaching and mentoring training with Guildhall and am currently working towards accreditation in this field of practice.
NEWS
'Iron Butterflies' is a Ukrainian feature-length hybrid documentary about the downing of flight MH17, is part of the official selection at Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary Competition 2023 (USA), Berlin International Film Festival Panorama program 2023 (DE), Thessaloniki Film Festival 2023 (GR), Movies That Matter 2023 (NL), Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2023 (CA), Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS), Doc Edge Film Festival (NZ), KVIFF (CZ), Docaviv (ISRL), Docudays (UA), Warsaw International Film Festival (PL), and DOK.Fest 2023 (DE).
*Winner RIGHTS NOW! Main Prize at Docudays 2023 (UA)
Director: ROMAN LUIBYI
Producers: BABYLON'13 & TRIMAFILM
Choreographer and Performer: BRIDGET FISKE
"Occasionally, the screen goes to black and white, and what seconds ago was simple footage is revealed as reenactment. And not even simply that, but...dance that probes the underlying themes - complicity, terror, loss. It is wordless exposition, simple and powerful..."
Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
"On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by Russian forces over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. The reality of this attack, and its possible ramifications for the then-ongoing war in Donbas and the West’s relationship with Russia, was immediately questioned by the Russian government and media. As voluminous evidence — including physical artifacts like the butterfly-shaped shrapnel found in the bodies of the pilots — piled up, the lies denying reality only became more outlandish and incredible.
In a world where violence can only be defended by lies, and lies only maintained by violence, Iron Butterflies presents the truth of what happened to MH17, but also what was at stake by not confronting it. Director Roman Liubyi uses a wealth of visual material and individual testimonies to craft this artful yet evidence-driven examination of a turning point in recent world history. This act of mass murder not only destroyed so many people’s lives and the possible future that they could have built — it contained the seeds of the future we now live in."
PROJECTS & PORTFOLIO
Photographers whose work appears on this site: Ekua Bayunu, Maureen Billeau, Victor Isabel Bueno, Steve Chong, Lisa Cullen, Costin Chesnoiu for Teatrul National Radu Stanca Sibiu, Jade Ellis Photography, Bridget Fiske, Christine Fiske, Jessie Giraud, Joseph Lau, Nicolai Khalezin, Matt Kowalczuk, Stelios Manousakis, Nadia Milford, Stephanie Pan, Dorin Alexandru Părău, Point of View, Jana Sedláčková, Brian Slater, Cloe Sophia, Eamonn Sweeney - CreativeImageworx and Sammie Williams.
Website design: Bridget Fiske