Move, Draw, Sing, Restore
Date: Thursday 25th of May
Time: 10am – 3.00pm
Venue: Bay Pavilions Theatre/ Rehearsal Studio
Cost: $10.00
Book your spot in this amazing workshop here
Experience quiet, reflective art-based practices such as dance, song, visualisation, drawing and deep relaxation in this full day workshop. This creative workshop will combine gentle dance movement explorations and quiet reflective practices such as visualisation and pastel drawing. Deep relaxation techniques will also be experienced through restorative yoga and the uplifting exploration of voice and vocal expression through song.
These practices enliven, nourish and integrate the mind-body connection and promote rest, quietness within, giving us time to re-charge and engage our imagination and creativity. We welcome all levels of ability, mobility and experience. This full day workshop is suitable for artists, non-artists and members of the community wishing to re-connect with creativity, joy and expression, and restorative, healing, arts-based practices.
This workshop is a part of ‘Project Alchemy’ led by the award-winning Canberra-based company Rebus Theatre. It is a community arts and cultural development project offering employment for regional artists to lead community engagement arts projects. This project is enabling practising artists from regions directly impacted by the Black Summer Bushfires to come together, rebuild their practice and lead community projects employing the arts to help repair, reconnect and celebrate their community.
Project Alchemy is made possible thanks to funding from the Australian Government for the Black Summer Bushfire Grant Program. Rebus is also supported by Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres and the ACT Government.
The Artists
Susannah Keebler
Dancer/Choreographer/Educator (East Gippsland)
Susannah Keebler is a dancer, choreographer, educator, certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, and yoga instructor, with a Master of Dance from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, AUS and BA (dance) from Bennington College, VT, USA. Susannah lived and worked as a dancer for ten years in New York City before moving to the remote-rural town Mallacoota, VIC in 2008.
Currently, Susannah is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, researching continuity and disruption of regional dance as creative practice in the context of crisis. She is inspired by collaboration, her environments, transformation, the revelation of imagination, and the unexpectedness of both the every-day and the extraordinary.
Robyn Williams
Mixed Media Artist/Art Therapist (Bega Valley)
Inspired by the natural world around me, my art practice has led me to experiment with a mix of media, from painting, textiles and works in glass, to eco dying and botanic drawing on paper.
When out in nature, as I move through a particular site or place, I photograph and key out species of plants and get a sense of what fauna and bird species may be present. I collect material that becomes the basis for creating works on paper, cloth or three-dimensional installations. The land itself provides the inspiration and resources I need for my work, so, in that regard, I feel that whatever I make is a collaborative effort.
I have studied extensively, from Textile Design, Certificate 2 and 3 Visual Arts at TAFE, followed by a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University. Studying Transpersonal Art Therapy (Ad. Diploma) helped reveal an inner landscape and well-being practices. I continue to find ways of sharing these acquired skills and knowledge with an audience, through exhibiting work and mentoring people from all types of backgrounds and abilities.
Padma Newsome
Musician/Composer/Arranger (East Gipplsland)
Padma Newsome is an Australian composer, arranger, and performer based in Mallacoota, Victoria. His musical palette expresses colours of the coastal wilderness where he lives, blended with modernist avant garde, Hindusthani and folk elements from India, chamber music remnants, and the energy founded in the pop/rock world.
He composes for traditional large and small ensemble, the electro-acoustic medium, improvised chamber ensemble, music for dance and theatre, and rock bands. Padma is a community focussed musician. He currently directs and delivers Mallacoota’s “Ashes to Music” post NYE 2019 Firestorm creative recovery programme. He is an embedded researcher in Arts recovery (ANU).
Elise May
Dancer/Choreographer/ Video artist Yoga Teacher (Eurobodalla)
Elise May is a dancer, choreographer, video artist and Yoga teacher. Elise has worked internationally and in Australia as an independent artist and performer. Elise joined Brisbane’s Expressions Dance Company (EDC) in 2008 and became Assistant Artistic Director to Natalie Weir. Elise performed, choreographed and was engaged as a teaching artist in Australia, the US, Switzerland, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and China. In 2012 she received the Australian Dance Award – ‘Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer’
Elise’s Master of Arts (Research) at QUT investigated the use of the moving image and digital media in live performance. Her choreographic practice continues to investigate performance design, installation, moving image, site-specific and interdisciplinary contexts for dance and digital media. . Elise was Associate Lecturer in Dance at Queensland University of Technology in 2019 and Choreographer-in-Residence with CIRCA Contemporary Circus in 2021. She now resides on the NSW South Coast.
