fold Artistic Director: Anouk van Dijk Executive Producer: Catherine Jones Business & Program Manager: Hillary Coyne Production & Operations Manager: Michael Carr Marketing & Development Manager: Luke McKinnon
AORTA was commissioned by Chunky Move as part of Next Move – a program committed to nurturing the next generation of Australia’s leading dance makers. Next Move is designed to bridge the divide between young choreographers making small independent work and more established choreographers running their own organisations or engaged with larger commissions.
Chunky Move Staff
Next Move
Chunky Move
what is or what can be contemporary dance in an ever-evolving Australian culture. Our work is diverse in form and content encompassing media and installation work. Chunky Move’s multi-tiered programming initiatives nurture and underpin a strong and vibrant dance culture in our home city of Melbourne and create critically acclaimed and popular productions of scale for presentations nationally and internationally. Chunky Move Board
Megan Williams Production & Operations Coordinator: Blair Hart Marketing & Development Coordinator: Pauline Robert Finance Administrator: Anne MacDonald Class Curator: Kristy Ayre Front of House Staff: Annabelle Balharry, Emily Lochowicz and Phoebe Robinson Publicity: Miranda Brown Publicity
Peter Biggs CNZM (Chair), Stephen Armstrong, Jeremy Blackshaw, Annie Dawson, Rhod EllisJones, Jeff Khan, Margaret Parker, Margaret Thompson, Anouk van Dijk.
Special Thanks Chunky Move would like to thank the following people and organisations for their support of AORTA: Marcus Pugh and Maytal Miller at Resolution X, Kelvin Gedye at System Sound, Malthouse Theatre Production Staff, Ivy Dwyer Hinkley and Lucy Guerin.
Major Partners
Media Partner
Wine Partner
Next Move Leaders Program Chunky Move would like to thank and acknowledge the foundation donors of our Next Move Leaders Program: Peter and Mary Biggs and Daniel and Danielle Besen. For more information about how you can support the next generation of Australian dance, please email luke@chunkymove.com.au or 9645 5188.
Productions Partners
Supporting Partners
Government Partners Choreographic Secondment Program
Chunky Move is supported by the Victorian Government, through Arts Victoria and the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
fold Threading throughout the work is the notion that at any given time we are both alive and dying and that the inevitability of death joins us all. Much of AORTA is a choreographic investigation of our complex physical system – how does blood move? What does a neural pathway look like? But it is also the story of our mortality, our growth and decay. I wanted to explore both our tremulousness as well as the driving surge of our aliveness; the fragile, crumbling bones and the bombastic beat driven animal. It could easily be argued that we are our biology; that there is no separation between mind and body and that, in fact, our every action is predetermined by our genetics and physiology. Despite vast breakthroughs in science we still don’t know it all. What drives us is essentially a mystery. Inspired by the metronomic nature of the heart – our ticking clock – AORTA attempts to bring the interior workings of our bodies to the surface.
seed of the idea through to putting it on stage. I’m so grateful for the opportunity and hope you enjoy it. Next Move initiative is a fantastic, unique program that allows the choreographer to Enormous thanks to Chunky Move and their supporters for making this possible and to all the people who do so much behind the scenes – Michael, Blair, Hillary, Luke, Pauline, Megan and Anne and to Anouk and Catherine for the commission. I have many people to thank for bringing AORTA to life. Huge gratitude to Josh, Jimmy and James for their incredible dancing and for giving their all to this project. To Robin for yet another brilliantly inspiring soundtrack and all of the other million things. To Rhian for the beautiful video visualisation of the work and Shio for the striking costume design. Thanks also to my choreographic secondment, Timothy Walsh and to all of the other secondments who have been a part of this process. Special thanks to my dear family and daughters.
A note from Stephanie Lake