WHAT TO EXPECT:

What kind of intense listening is required? When to inhibit action? Dancing is hard work, not necessarily physically but for our attention, particularly if where is the joy? is the question. How do we keep our attention moving so we don’t get caught up in what things look like? How do we slip slide over the hard edges of pre-loved forms, so their historical hegemony is disarmed? What kind of conversation between weakness and strength, instinct and fragility? What role the back side, the underside and other obscure regions or discarded surfaces? Can our dancing bodies revel in the challenge of meeting a world that splits and scatters and pulls us endlessly in multiple directions? 

Ros has invented many choreographic approaches that have led her into these questions. The Lab will unpick some of them to build individual performances that let dance occur as responsive inquiry. We may also work outside, weather permitting.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Dance makers and performers with a body-based practice, strong interest in choreographic experimentation and performance inquiry, and who enjoy exploring alongside others.

Tasmanian artists and artists from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

DATES: Monday 7th — Friday 11th of December 2026

VENUE: Assembly 197 Studio, 197 Wellington Street

HOW MUCH: Tasdance supports this intensive opportunity and offers it FREE of charge. Unfortunately, Tasdance can not cover travel and accommodation expenses. However, it can help successful applicants explore share house options and is willing to write letters of support for quick-response grants or other funding opportunities.

HOW TO APPLY: 

• Create two short videos (3mins MAX). Smartphone video quality is more than enough.

  • Video One: Briefly introduce yourself and tell us:

    • About your dance practice.

    • How you develop your choreographic or performance inquiry.

    • What you are currently excited by in dance.

  • Video Two: A 3-minute video of yourself dancing that demonstrates your choreographic and movement interests.

• Click on the MAKE 26 PARTICIPATION FORM link, fill out the form and press submit.

Please note that we will use your videos only to select the MAKE 26 group to join Ros.

NEXT STEPS:

• Applications open October 6th 2026

• Application closes at midnight on October 23rd 2026

• All applicants will be notified by October 30th.

MORE INFORMATION: If you have any questions, please email adam@tasdance.com.au

LEARN ABOUT ROSALIND CRISP:

Over 40 years, Australian dancer-choreographer Rosalind Crisp has carved out her own dance genre. She relentlessly explores dancing, inventing a myriad of ways for dancers to compose the dance themselves, whilst they are dancing. With her intensely research-based practice and multi-disciplinary team of international collaborators she has produced over 30 major works that challenge dance’s capacity to respond to the world we are undoing. She is sought after around the world for her live composition method.

Her works have toured to hundreds of festivals in Europe, Asia and Australia from bush sites to Sydney Opera House. In 2026, Seen Unseen, commissioned by Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company (formerly the Forsythe Co.) Germany, was performed for over 4,000 people. Rosalind has received, among other awards, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in 2015 and the 2025 Creative Australia Award for Dance. 

Her works emerge from sustained studio practice and long-term exchange with colleagues: Lizzie Thomson, Olivia Millard, Phoebe Robinson, Céline Debyser, Frédéric Blondy, Andrew Morrish, Maya Dalinsky, Peter Fraser, Bo Wiget, Vic McEwan, Isabelle Ginot… in a network of studios and theatres around the world: in 1996 she established the Omeo Dance studio in Sydney as a place for her choreographic research. The studio became home to the Sydney experimental dance scene for ten years. Invited to Paris in 2002 she became the Associate Artist of Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson until 2014, was guest professor at HZT Berlin University of the Arts 2008-2009, and artist in residence at Tanzfabrik Berlin until 2019. Since 2021 she co-facilitates a national and international artist residency program at Orbost Studio for Dance Research on the denuded lands of the Gunnai-Kurnai, Bidewel and Manero-Ngarigo people in far eastern Victoria. 

“Completely unique, truly very special.” Jan Tussing, hr2 Kultur Germany, 24 March 2026

“The soul of Liveworks.”  Cassie Tongue, The Saturday Paper, 4 November 2023

“Revel in the presence of this dancer who might also be a rock star.”  Andrew Fuhrmann, The Age, 24 August 2023

“Devastating, intelligent and profoundly embodied... Crisp, at the height of her powers, proves that the most exciting Australian dancers are not the young and athletic, but dancers with decades of knowledge and experience, who are still discovering why embodiment is so vital today.” Rennie McDougall, The Monthly, February 2019

“Exhilaratingly earthy and present... I entered the space exhausted and hungry; I exited elated and babbling. While so much contemporary dance stays on the surface, Crisp sources hers from deep within, achieving a powerful physical presence.” Jana Perkovic, The Guardian, 23 February 2015

“Beyond analogy, Crisp’s movement is astonishing in its sheer otherness... the standard syntax of dance is erased. It's magical.” Keith Gallasch, RealTime 2011

LEARN ABOUT OMEODANCE: www.omeodance.com