Hosted annually by established guest artists from the Asia Pacific region, Choreolab is Chunky Move’s professional development workshop program. This Choreolab will be held from 5-9 February 2024 and hosted by Chunky Move’s current Choreographer in Residence, Melanie Lane.

Melanie shares her ongoing exploration of the mythic body, conjuring strategies for the material and immaterial, enchantment and magic. Interested in speculative fiction as a mode for generating new choreographic languages, Melanie offers a space to embrace the uncanny and supernatural as a state of resistance, reflection and transformation.

Drawing from past and current works in development, the lab will begin with daily practice incorporating Melanie’s physical tools and principles followed by sharing choreographic processes, exploration and composition.

Choreolab is supported by Australia Council of the Arts, Chunky Move, and Victorian College of the Arts. 

The 2023 edition of Choreolab will be held 22–24 March as part of FRAME: A Biennial of Dance, and is presented as part of Δ (Change From Aotearoa), a bilateral project curated by Jonathan Homsey and Efren Pamilacan that centres Street Dance.

Choreolab 2023: Δ (Change from Aotearoa) features three of Aotearoa’s (New Zealand) leading dance innovators grounded in Vogue, Waving, Creature Movement work and World-Building: Jahra Wasasala, Ooshcon and Jaycee Iman. Each artist will share their practice and spectrum of techniques rooted in various Street Dance techniques and Ballroom Dance foundations to develop Creature Movement studies and build choreographic worlds.

Through Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (Pacific) modes of storytelling and talanoa (exchange), Jahra, Ooshcon and Jaycee anchor a web of physical connections, empowering a diverse ecology of aesthetics, and expanding movement potentials.

Participants in Choreolab 2023: Δ (Change from Aotearoa) are invited to perform on Saturday 25 March at Dancehouse as part of Δ (Change from Aotearoa): Archipelago, a durational performance to the sounds of acclaimed music artists live from Basement Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland).

Contact Gonzo has a unique type of performance that involves constant physical contact in forms that sometimes look like street fighting and sometimes dance. The places they perform are equally unique including parks, on the streets, in woods, in nuclear shelters or underground malls. Their form of improvisational performance grew out of experiments using techniques of the “contact improvisation” style and the Systema style, which is often referred to as a Russian style of Aikido. 

Choreolab 2020 engaged participants in Contact Gonzo’s powerfully balanced elements of performance art, street fighting and dance. Calling on extreme physical resilience, durability, agility and trust within the group, the workshop concluded with a public outcome for participants, together with the members of Contact Gonzo at NGV International as part of Asia TOPA’s public program.