2021 TASDANCE ENSEMBLE

Gabriel Comerford

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Jenni Large

Jenni is a contemporary dance artist collaborating, performing, choreographing and teaching on unceded lands in so-called Australia, most recently based on Gurrumbilbarra country of the Wulgurukaba people and Thul Garrie Waja country of the Bindal People (Townsville). 

Driven by the personal-political transformational forces of embodied practice, Jenni is passionate about understanding and questioning pre-existing societal structures and desires genuine connection and discourse from and within art.

Jenni was a formative ensemble member and assistant rehearsal director with Kyle Page and Amber Haines at Dancenorth from 2015-2019 touring extensively nationally and internationally award winning works by Amber Haines & Kyle Page, Lucy Guerin & Gideon Obarzanek, as well as various works by Ross McCormack, Stephanie Lake, Lee Searle, Alisdair Macindoe and Jo Lloyd. 

Jenni has also collaborated and performed in works by Sue Peacock, Aimee Smith, Isabella Stone, Rhiannon Newton, Leigh Warren & Dancers and was a member of Tasdance with Annie Greig from 2012-13. Jenni has undertaken choreographic residencies at Fresh Ground JWCOCA, Tasdance TRIP, IndepenDANCE, Dancenorth, Lucy Guerin Inc, GUTS Dance and Metro Arts. Her choreographic works include ‘Baby Heaven Love Voice’ 2017 and ‘Oh, how my soul flares up in a minute!’ 2019 for Dancenorth’s Tomorrow Makers, ‘All Expenses Paid’ co-choreographed with Jack Ziesing for Stompin at Mona Foma 2021 and her first independent full-length solo work ‘White Woman’ premiering in 2021.

Jenni is a graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and studied at the Taipei National University of the Arts on international exchange.

Amber McCartney

Amber is a Melbourne-based dancer. She has performed for companies Chunky Move (Token Armies, Accumulation, Red Shift, and It Sounds Silly), Lucy Guerin (Metal), Antony Hamilton Projects (Number of the Machine), Tasdance (Reactor), Dancenorth (OneInfinity), as well as choreographers Prue Lang (Accumulation, Project F, Yoni & Stellar Project), James Batchelor (Red Shift, Island, Deepspace, Multiplication, Violence, and Metasystems), Adam Wheeler, and Gideon Obarzanek. She has created two works for Transit Dance, Yellow Wheel, and Lucy Guerin Inc (Pieces For Small Spaces). In 2020 Amber was a recipient of SOLITUDE 1, Chunky Move’s home-based residency program.

Amber graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012.

Kyall Shanks

Kyall is a Naarm/Melbourne based contemporary dance artist. His career so far has focused on finding a well rounded balance of performance, choreography and teaching work. By finding how these three areas can compliment and feed into each other, Kyall is passionate about increasing the accessibility of dance through youth and community work. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts 2015 and since then has danced for Tasdance, Antony Hamilton Projects, Chunky Move, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, Opera Australia, The Delta Project and Liquidskin Dance Company. In 2017-2018 Kyall undertook an 8 month international residency program with DanceBox in Kobe, Japan, and then spent 3 months in Sweden as a member of ilYoung 2018. Kyall has engaged with community youth groups and schools as a teacher and choreographer, examples of this being the Arts Centre Melbourne/Matthew Bourne 'Lord Of The Flies' project, the 2019 Dance Massive work 'Simulcast', and Stephanie Lake Company's 2020 Melbourne Fringe work 'Multiply'. Through his work he has represented/taught for The Victorian College of the Arts, Chunky Move, Ausdance Victoria, Arts Centre Melbourne, DRILL, Transit Dance and The Space Dance and Arts Centre. In 2020 he designed Chunky Move's new set of education offerings "Experiences for Young People", based off of current chunky move repertoire. He currently works as one of the Tasdance Ensemble members, as well as Artistic Director to the preprofessional youth dance company Yellow Wheel.