Natalie Cursio

Korea, Singapore

Natalie Cursio is an independent choreographer, creating live performance work but also exploring dance in the context of public space, film, photography and fashion. Her work has been presented in Taipei, Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. Cursio has worked as an assistant director on the company Not Yet It's Difficult's cross cultural, bilingual version of K, as part of the Seoul Performing Arts Festival. She also presented two of her own works at the Busan International Beach Dance Festival, Korea. In 2006 Cursio will present her curated season of With A Bullet: The Album Project at ArtsHouse, Melbourne where eight choreographers create new works based on 'the first song they ever made up a dance to'. Cursio will divide her residency between Singapore where she will create new work for Odyssey Dance Theatre, and Korea where she will collaborate with Theatre Company Nottle.

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia-Korea Foundation.

Tim Dargaville & Rosalie Hastwell

India

Tim Dargaville's career covers a diverse range of collaborative work as composer, pianist and percussionist. His music has been commissioned by recognised performers and ensembles worldwide. He has performed with a broad range of companies including Astra in Melbourne and the renowned Karnataka College of Percussion in India. Rosalie Hastwell has worked extensively in the fields of performance, multicultural arts, cultural planning, project management and fundraising. She has a particularly strong interest in developing models for cross-cultural arts within a community cultural development framework and is currently the Manager of the Arts and Culture Program at North Richmond Community Health Centre. Through their joint residency at Adishakti, Pondicherry they will further develop their skills and expertise in inter-cultural artistic practice. Dargaville will use this opportunity to create new work for performance in India and Australia combining his interests in theatre, percussion and new music, while Hastwell will explore the potentials of engaging local communities in the company's activities.

Supported by the Australia-India Council and the Australia Council.

China

Robert Draffin has over 32 years of experience as theatre director, writer, dramaturge and actor trainer. He studied at the New York Odin Theatre Company and Laban Institute of Movement and in Indonesia with Ida Bagus Sutarja and Sardono Kusumo, and he has worked as a lecturer in acting at Victoria College of the Arts School of Drama and taught acting at Theatre Training Research Practice, Singapore. Draffin was a member of the Mill Theatre, The Australian Contemporary Theatre and Artistic Director of TheatreWorks His work has been performed nationally and internationally, with a long association of cultural exchange with Asian artists and practice and researching acting methodologies. He will undertake a residency with Shanghai International Performing Research Arts Centre to research traditional folk forms, create a performance using classical poetic text and reconnect with directors He Bing Zhu, Ma Hui Tian and Lin Zhaohua in Beijing.

Supported by the Australia Council.

Michael Fowler

Japan

Dr. Michael Fowler is a pianist and keyboardist who has performed and worked with some of the icons of 20th Century Western classical music. He studied piano at the University of Newcastle, then as a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, USA and has appeared at venues and music festivals in the USA, Japan, Mexico, Australia and Europe. Dr. Fowler is an exponent of contemporary electro-acoustic music, but has also initiated an arts practice that explores audio design through installation, Japanese gardens as models for spatial environments and improvisation via the open source graphical computer language pure data. He hopes to continue his research into the nexus between humans and computer software through his residency in Japan at Future University's Department of Media Architecture. Currently Dr. Fowler is an ARC Post-Doc Fellow at the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at RMIT University.

Supported by the Australia Council.

Paul Gazzolo

Japan

Paul Gazzolo's history of arts practice spans a multiplicity of genres including choreography,
performance, video, installation and set design for stage, gallery and site-specific locations. He has a degree in performance at WAAPA and is a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner. His work has been presented in Europe, South Africa and Australia and includes a substantial history of collaboration with Xavier Le Roy and the group Les Ballets C de la B. His current interests explore the complex relationships between architect and user, performer and perceiver and the dissolution between public and private spaces. In Japan, Gazzolo will be hosted by Future University, Hakodate where he will continue his research into these relationships between the built form and the body.

Supported by Arts WA and the Australia Council.

Erik Griswold

China

Musician Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specialising in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all of his own. Active in improvised and notated musical traditions, Griswold performs as a soloist, in Clocked Out Duo and collaborates with musicians and multidisciplinary artists. He has composed new works for performers such as Margaret Leng Tan, Steven Schick, and Anthony Burr, exploring the possibilities of miniature music boxes, found object and percussion. Griswold holds a PhD from the University of California, San Diego and has previously studied Chinese traditional and folk music in Sichuan Province. Through his residency with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music he hopes to expand his knowledge and skills in Sichuan Opera percussion and Jinqian Ban and collaborate with composer Zou Xiangping on a new production for the Queensland Music Festival.

Supported by Arts Qld and the Australia Council.

Cat Hope

Singapore

Cat Hope is an accomplished sound artist, performer, composer, songwriter and noise artist whose interdisciplinary practice crosses over into video, performance and installation. Based in Western Australia, her work has taken her on numerous tours around Australia, the USA, Japan and Europe. She has written electronic soundscapes for dance and theatre companies as well as pure music commissions. Hope plays experimental bass guitar and is singer and songwriter in Perth band Gata Negra. She has directed and edited numerous short music videos, created audiovisual installations and has an active interest in challenging the relationship between image and sound. She also lectures in new music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. During her residency in Singapore, Hope will work with Substation to develop a new work.

Supported by Arts WA and the Australia Council.

Steve Mayhew

East Timor

Over the last 14 years Steve Mayhew has worked widely across the spectrum of the arts in management and creating new theatre works as a director, writer, designer, composer, dramaturge and creative producer. He has worked with many professional artists, community members and young people to devise original works which attempt to tell stories with unusual and unconventional structures and methods. He would be interested in establishing a framework for Bibi Bulak to develop hybrid arts skills and production ideas that involve performance, video and sound, working with professional and non-professional actors and community members.

Supported by Arts SA and the Australia Council.

Dianne Reid

India

Dianne Reid is an independent dance and video artist and Artistic Director of Dancehouse, Melbourne's centre for independent contemporary dance. She was a member of Danceworks, a founding member of Outlet Dance in Adelaide and lecturer in contemporary dance and dance video at Deakin University. Her dance video works have screened at a number of dance film festivals including IMZ Dance Screen, Monaco, Videodance, Greece and ADF Dancing for the camera. In her current practice, Reid is experimenting with the synergies and tensions between live improvisation and video documentary. Her residency at the Darpana Performing Arts Academy, Ahmedabad will offer her a period of concentrated artistic research, a context for collaboration with a range of artists across disciplines and an opportunity to engage with the traditional practices and contemporary applications of Indian culture.

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia-India Council.

Andrish Saint-Clare

Indonesia

Andrish Saint-Clare began his professional work as an actor and musician with Rex Cramphorne's Performance Syndicate, a seminal Australian theatre company working with performance styles from diverse cultures. He continued to pursue cultural, musical and dramaturgical interests, studying performance in South America, Morocco and Indonesia. In recent years, he has been collaborating with practitioners in remote indigenous communities in the Top End, which has resulted in major stage productions at festivals in Melbourne, Perth, Darwin and Makassar, Indonesia. Saint-Clare heads to Indonesia to collaborate with the Balinese dalang I Made Sidia. Whilst there he will explore traditional forms of Balinese performance and shadow puppetry, using contemporary concepts and production techniques.

Supported by the Australia-Indonesia Institute and Arts NT.