• Participants will do exercises and engage in discussions that Riana uses when making Animate Loading. They will be supported to deepen their understandings of their own movement and each other. They will work indoors and outdoors.
• Another intention of the lab is for Riana to make connections with potential performers to participate in a future version of Animate Loading in Naarm.
• This will be a disability-led process, where access is a key consideration. Making sure people are supported to participate to their fullest is the goal.
• At the end of the lab, there will be a public sharing. Participation in this is not mandatory. Elements can be adjusted depending on people’s access requirements and comfort levels.

• Animate Loading is a choreographic performance work. It often happens outdoors, from dusk into darkness. Each new performance is crafted to fit each new space it occurs in.
• No space is neutral: this is an important starting point for the work. Every performance is informed by the architectural, social and historical contexts of the unceded land on which it takes place.
• Across each performance, a dynamic group of performers draw on their movement languages and lived experiences to bring a space to life, and open it up to new potential. Previous performers have been dancers, skaters, freestyle footballers, etc.
• Through their presence and their collective movement, they bring a space’s seen and unseen dimensions into focus; reconfiguring audience interactions with place, architecture and each other.
• Animate Loading has been met with widespread acclaim: the work has taken place in a rooftop carpark, amongst post-industrial stone ruins and water tanks, and most recently, in and around the new Sydney Modern building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as part of its official opening celebrations.

People who are interested in:

• movement (of one’s own body and/or objects)
• how a location/space can impact one’s movement
• how someone’s body or presence can impact a space

Riana is particularly keen to welcome participants who identify with any of the following words, movement languages, styles and/or lived experiences: 

Acrobatics, activist, anarchist, bla(c)k, bike, breaking, chronically ill, crutches, climbing, circus, Disabled, D/deaf, different, ethnic, First Nations, HoH (Hard of Hearing), hidden, interdisciplinary, intervention, LGBQTIA+, neurodiverse, not an artist, outsider, parkour, person of colour, queer, skateboard, trans, tricking, tumbling, untrained, voguing, (in)visible

No performance experience necessary!

Three (3) of the lab spaces are disability-identified. The disabled community is wide and includes people who identify with disability, D/deafness, chronic illness and/or neurodiversity. Please indicate if you are part of community in your application.  

This opportunity is for Naarm based artists (there is no travel allowance).

• EOI’s closed
• LAB dates: Monday 6 – Sunday 12 March
• Where: Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
• Selected participants will receive a $300 honorarium