Dr. Melinda Smith (OAM) is a multidisciplinary artist, mentor, lecturer with lived experience of cerebral palsy. Melinda holds an Order of Australia Medal from the Australian Government, and an honorary Doctorate from Deakin University for her outstanding contribution to the arts and her tireless work in breaking down barriers to inclusion for people with disability both in Australia and internationally. As a dancer, Melinda has collaborated with Dianne Reid, Yumi Umiumare, Penny Baron, Carolyn Hannah, Caroline Bowditch, Nick Papas and Sally Smith. In 2018, she created her first solo work, Spasmotive, which challenged assumptions about different bodies, and the ways in which perceived ‘flaws’ can be embraced to enhance artistic expression. In 2020 Melinda became a Director of the Board of both Loom Arts and Management and the Women*s Circus. Melinda is currently part of the Women*s Circus ensemble ‘Momentum’ which has seen two performing seasons including the Alter State Festival at Melbourne’s Arts Centre in September 2022 and a season at the Bowery Theatre in 2023. Melinda is proudly one of the AirSticks earliest adopters, helping co-design the instrument as part of the AirDancer project supported by AusCo and Monash University's SensiLab.

Dr Alon Ilsar is a drummer, improviser, instrument designer and researcher. He is currently an ARC Industry Fellow at Monash University’s SensiLab researching the uses of the AirSticks, a gestural instrument he invented, in the field of health and wellbeing, making music creation more accessible to the broader community. Alon has played the AirSticks at Sydney Festival, Sydney’s Vivid Festival, on Triple J’s Like a Version and at NYC’s MET Museum, with projects such as Trigger Happy Visualised, The Hour, The Sticks, Tuka (from Thundamentals), Sandy Evans’ Ahimsa and Rockpool, Ellen Kirkwood’s [A]part, Kirin J Callinan, Kind of Silence (UK), Cephalon (US), and Melinda Smith's Conduit Bodies and Speak Percussion's Before Nightfall. He has played drums in Belvoir Theatre’s Keating! the Musical Sydney Theatre Company’s Mojo, Meow Meow with the London Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Western Australia Symphony Orchestras, Stephanie Lake’s Manifesto, Alan Cumming, Jake Shears and Eddie Perfect.

Sam Trolland is a Melbourne based Interactive Media Artist and researcher with a passion for fostering experiences of creative expression through technology. Sam's practice centres around embodied movement as an expressive device, creating interactive installations that respond to movements of the body in a pensive, yet playful, experience for his audience. Sam has presented interactive installation works at Music and Arts festivals across Victoria and NSW. Sam is also a PhD candidate at SensiLab under the supervision of Professor Jon McCormack and Dr Alon Ilsar. His research is investigating the personalisation of gestural technologies for expressive audio-visual interactions in music and dance performance.

Zoe Boesen is a dramaturg, director, creative producer, performer, theatre maker and disability advocate. Zoe is co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Loom Arts and Management. Zoe completed a Bachelor of Performing Arts at Monash University in 2003, a Bachelor of Dramatic Art at Victorian College of the Arts in 2010, a Graduate Certificate in Disability and Inclusion at Deakin in 2021 and a Certificate in Audio Description with Access2Arts in 2023. Zoe has worked in a variety of roles for multiple arts organisations including Arts House, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, 45 Downstairs, Victorian College of the Arts, Red Stitch, Footscray Community Arts, Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Theatreworks and Darebin Speakeasy. Zoe has also worked for major festivals interstate and across various roles in tv and film.

Anna Cordingley APDG is an award-winning set and costume designer for theatre, opera, dance, musical theatre and cabaret. Anna is currently undertaking a PhD at The University of Melbourne. Anna is Lecturer in Design at The University of Melbourne, Faculty of the VCA & Music and at the Design Akademie Berlin SRH Hochschule für Kommunikation und Design. Anna brings her costume design and creation knowledge to the project and is creating a costume which incorporates the AirSticks wearable technology.

Bronwyn Pringle is a Lighting Designer and Theatre Maker based in Melbourne/Naarm. She has worked around Australia with companies such as Pop up Playground, NICA, ArtPlay, MTC, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Australian Theatre of the Deaf, Arts Projects Australia, Anna Seymour and Collaborators, Black Hole Theatre, JoltArts, Outback Theatre for Young People, Chamber Made, Marruk Marruk and more, working across all genres of performance, on projects ranging from large festivals to community engagement to small developmental pieces in venues that include The Princess Theatre, a London West End Nightclub, Falls Festival in Lorne, a warehouse in Buenos Aires, the Federation Square air-conditioning ducts, The Segerstrom Arts Centre in California, and a woolshed in Glencoe, plus many more conventional and non-conventional theatre spaces. Bronwyn has a strong focus on immersive works that engage in the tactile and three dimensional qualities that only live experiences offer. With Melanie Liertz, she formed the company Making Space, to create opportunities for design driven, immersive works. She is also deeply committed to art that engages with social justice; elevating marginalised voices and engaging with members of our community that are often overlooked. In 2020, Bronwyn completed a Masters in Design for Performance at The Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Jo Dunbar is a choreographer, director and facilitator and co- founded Australia’s first dance company for deaf and hearing performers, The Delta Project. Born profoundly deaf and bi-lingual in both English and Auslan she brings to the project her passion about all things diverse, experimental and inclusive as she supports in refining and creation of choreography for the project.

Jessamine Moffett is a recent graduate from the VCA and is a Naarm (Melbourne) based, disabled designer with a passion for theatre, live performance, film and television. She has an Advanced Diploma in Professional Screenwriting and won the award for Outstanding Student Performance at RMIT. Wanting to further develop her skills in film she completed Film Foundations at VCA. Through Foundations she worked on several short films which ignited her love for production design, costume and the art department. She then completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Production at VCA with a focus on set and costume design and costume construction.

Conduit Bodies invites the audience to reflect on their own preconceptions of disability, in particular of physical disability and complex communication needs. This work directly challenges ideas about what constitutes dance and who dance is for. This work also reconfigures the expressive potential of assistive technology such as wheelchairs, speech generating and motion sensing devices, as they become the main threads of the creative fabric.

- Melinda Smith

Lead Artist/Performer: Melinda Smith
Composer/Performer/Instrument Inventor: Alon Ilsar
Digital Visual Designer: Sam Trolland
Creative Producer/Dramaturg: Zoe Boesen
Co-Producer: Hannah Reekie
Production Co-Designer: Anna Cordingly
Production Co-Designer: Jessamine Moffett
Lighting Designer: Bronwyn Pringle
Movement Director: Jo Dunbar
Cultural Consultant: Joshua Pether