YUIKO MASUKAWA
Yuiko Masukawa is a Japanese choreographer based in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia. Her work brings together the inclusive and iconoclastic ethos of contemporary performance with her deep expertise of ballet.
She is a current recipient of the The Australian Ballet’s Telstra Emerging Choreographer’s Award for her work 3. She is also the recipient of the Lucy Guerin Inc. Naarm/Solo exchange program for 2025/2026, which will take place in both Indonesia and Australia. Later this year, she will begin development of a new work at The Australian Ballet through the Creative Development program.
Yuiko is working to create a context for independent and inclusive approaches to classical dance in Australia through choreography, teaching and local and international residencies and platforms. She has presented work at Arts House for Bleed Festival, at The Australian Ballet for Frame Festival and Bodytorque as well as the Bowery Theatre, Dancehouse, and Lucy Guerin Inc. She is also working to create bridges between Japan and Australia as an interpreter and cultural liaison including for Tokyo Ballet, The Australian Ballet and Terrapin for Asia TOPA.
In 2025 she undertook a choreographic secondment at Trisha Brown Company under choreographer Lee Serle, following on from 2020 secondments with New York City Ballet and Milwaukee Ballet, supported by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Her works have been nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Youth Dance in the 2018 Australian Dance Awards (Artistic director of Melbourne City Youth Ballet) and Design/Technical Achievement in the 2023 Green Room Awards (Running Machine).
Learn more: https://www.yuikomasukawa.me/
GEOFFREY WATSON
Geoffrey Watson is an artist whose practice is rooted in dance but frequently wanders into other disciplines and art forms like a stray cat looking for something to eat. His work as a performer and costume/set designer has been recognised by the Greenroom awards, receiving “Best Performer” in dance in 2023 and multiple nominations in visual design, technical achievement and performance. His visual art work has been exhibited at Liverpool Powerhouse, Melbourne Fashion Week, Virgin Australian Fashion Festival and Temperance Hall.
Geoffrey has worked with dance choreographers and companies within and beyond Australia including longstanding relationships with Nana Biluš Abaffy, Lucy Guerin Inc. and Alisdair Macindoe, as well as performances for Gekidan Kaitaisha (Japan), Hermann Nitsch (Austria) and The Australian Ballet. Geoffrey’s collaborations as costume/set designer include Chambermade, BalletLab, Lilian Steiner, Tra Mi Dinh, Lucy Guerin Inc. Benjamin Hurley and Amber McCartney.
Geoffrey’s choreographic works include “Camel” (Next Wave Festival), “Geoffrey’s Corpse” (Uferstudios, Berlin) and “Rachael Wisby” (The Substation, Pieces programme). His work in this area has merited significant fellowships including the Tanja Liedtke Fellowship (2019), the Chloe Monroe Fellowship (2023) and residencies at Temperance Hall, Lucy Guerin Inc. and Chunky Move. His new work, "the Story Of The Hare", recently underwent its first development through an Artist in Residence position at Temperance Hall.
LOUIE WISBY
Louie is a physical artist who was born in Naarm and lives on Gadigal land in Sydney. Louie graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. Since then she has pursued the creation of her own work and others. She has enjoyed working with Phillip Adams (Glory, Prelude), Jo Lloyd (Garden Dance, Bang Stop, FM:Air, Paris Was Yesterday), Geoffrey Watson (Rachael Wisby), Lee Serle (Time Portrait), Natalie Abbott (Re:Purpose the Mvmt), Nana Biluš Abaffy (A Bestiary of Unimaginable Animals) and Yuiko Masukawa (3).Her work has been presented by Temperance Hall (Please Do Not Move, Sybylla), Lucy Guerin Inc (Roses), The University of Melbourne (The Curtain Drops (The Jig is Up)) and Dance House (Judy and Me).
As a doctor of Chinese Medicine, Louie’s her recent explorations have taken place at the intersection of two knowledge systems. Through residencies at Critical Path in 2025, Louie is investigating the way that the Chinese Medicine conception of the bodies’ anatomy can be brought into the dancing body and co-exist (or clash) with other somatic practices.
BENJAMIN HURLEY
Benjamin Hurley is a queer, award-winning independent dancer, choreographer and teacher based in Naarm/Melbourne. He has worked with Phillip Adams BalletLab, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Ivan Perez, Alessandro Sciarroni, The Sway, Deanne Butterworth, Lee Serle, Victoria Chiu, Evelyn Morris, and Yuiko Masukawa amongst others. His full-length productions, ‘UpAndUpAndUpAndUpAndUp’ and ‘Dunes Rolling Down Dunes’, were jointly nominated for multiple Green Room Awards. His next production, ‘Scenarios’ with Scott Elstermann, will have its premiere at Dancehouse in August 2025. His practice has been supported by the City of Melbourne, the City of Port Phillip, The Ian Potter Foundation, The Besen Family Foundation, Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc, GUTS Dance and STRUT Dance, to name a few. He is a sessional teacher at the VCA, where he graduated in 2016.
CODY LAVERY
Cody Lavery is an Australian contemporary dance artist who trained at Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year program in 2016 and 2017. Following her graduation, she collaborated with artists and companies, including Sara Black, Chunky Move, Tasdance, Harrison Hall and Sam McGilp. In 2023, Cody relocated to Berlin, where she deepened her practice through Gaga training and workshops with Sharon Eyal’s company.
SAM MCGILP
Dr Sam Mcgilp is a new media artist based on Wurundjeri country in Naarm. He creates collaborative modes of making with performers through playful experiments that expand the potential dramaturgies of live performance.
Sam’s body of work includes performance (Running Machine - Arts House - 2022), hybrid digital/performance works (STACK - CTM Festival Berlin, Zerospace New York and SOFT CENTRE 2024), (Triplet State -ACC Korea and DAC Taipei - 2023, Body Crysis –ACMI - 2023 and The Substation – 2022) and films (Body Pipelines - Sydney Opera House - 2023, Bonanza! - Chunky Move - MIFF 2021).
Sam has worked extensively in collaborative contexts including with Harrison Hall, NAXS Future (Taiwan), Lu Yang (China), Kazuhiko Hiwa and Makoto Uemura (Japan).
ALISDAIR MACINDOE
Alisdair Macindoe is an acclaimed Australian dancer, choreographer, and sound designer known for his innovative approach to performance and technology. With a background in both dance and electronic music, Macindoe’s work often explores the intersection of movement, sound, and interactive systems. He has collaborated with leading artists and companies, earning multiple local and international awards for his inventive contributions to contemporary dance. This is Macindoe and Masukawa's fourth work together. Alisdair acknowledges Australian land is stolen land and was never ceded by any first nations peoples.
ROBBIE DIVINE (AKA ROBERT P. DOWNIE)
Robbie Divine (AKA Robert P. Downie) is an award-winning Naarm/Melbourne based composer, record producer, and performer working along the slippery edges of pop music. Divine is drawn to extremes and polarities in his practice - ugly vs beautiful, messy vs pristine - and how these opposing forces can strengthen one another. Divine is currently engaged in examining how identity is expressed within the relationship between vocalist and producer through the lens of pop music, culminating recently in "POP PLUS", a night of genre-bending performance at The Curtin as part of 2023's Now Or Never Festival.
Divine's recent composition credits include Amber McCartney's 2024 NEWBREED collaboration with Sydney Dance Co., Lucy Guerin’s “One Single Action" at RISING 2024, and "In The Club" directed by Kitan Petkovski in 2023.
JACK HANCOCK
Jack Hancock (The System) has been practicing as a fashion designer and garment maker since 2006. Graduating with 1st class honours at RMIT in 2012, Jack has worked in a number of corners of the fashion and textiles industry, operating as a pattern maker, a bespoke dressmaker, a costume designer for a number of contemporary dance works and has worked as a technical consultant for a whole range of local brands in Melbourne and surrounding areas.
As a designer Jack’s focus is always principally an exploration of form and fabric. Jack Hancock is a queer designer who explores bodies and forms in objective ways.
In 2020, Jack established the slow fashion house “The System” which is an exploration into the complex facets of the fashion, textiles and garment making industry. The System is an attempt to find new ways to operate in an industry that feels incongruous with a future that is demanding complete revolution. The garment making practice explores movement & ergonomics of cloth, whilst investigating the traditions of garment making practice and technique from a broad array of chapters of history and across cultures. Jack’s personal research into the political history of Japan, its garment making and wardrobe systems from across the late Warring states period through to the early meiji restoration has been critical in how he sees garments and textiles now. This research allowed Jack to observe the historical shifts within fashion and culture that occur not only across time but as populations of differing cultural expressions encounter one another.
Jack approaches traditional tailoring and contemporary fashion design practice with a somewhat “polyphasic” approach to the type of eras, expressions and design movements that give each piece or collection their meanings. Jack observes and creates garments through a framework that attempts to be highly objective when considering the garment being created, to its wearer and the wearers context. This highly detailed, carefully considered material application and meaning making is somewhat detached from fashion design trends, whilst also trying to express them and say something different with the same objective qualities we take for granted. This objectivity allows for textiles to be recontextulised, forms to be questioned and it fosters a process free from conformity to rigid understandings of what garments must be in their archetypical form.
Lately Jack has been focusing on garments for ceremonial purposes.
ALEXANDER NGUYEN
Alexander Nguyen is a freelance lighting technician since 2012. Specialising in lighting installation, systems and operations, with a focus on the exploration with the influences of light and the experimentation of light within its environments.
With a background in live events and production, ranging from independent theatre, music events and festivals, through to corporate AV, lighting control programming, service repair and maintenance, Alex has now expanded his abilities to lighting design. Further developing his skills in this area, collaborating with artists, incorporating technical integration with broader artistic elements and executing projects from start to finish.
Aiming for excellence and precision in his work, Alex enjoys all aspects of lighting and the boundless possibilities that comes with it.