Rosalind Crisp – WAG/Chunky Move Artist Residency recipient

We are thrilled to announce that Rosalind Crisp is the recipient of the WAG/Chunky Move Artist Residency. 

Rosalind will adapt her solo dance lecture DIRtywork to the south-west Victorian context and share this research at WAG and Chunky Move.

She will engage with local artists and communities in Warrnambool and Melbourne, visit sites of environmental damage in the south-west, and draw on processes and practices she is developing in East Gippsland’s forests and through regional, national and international residencies. Growing up near a pristine wilderness and moving back there in 2014, she was shocked to find almost the entire wilderness cut down. The last remnants of native species are continually threatened by logging, burning and industrial farming.

What are the links between what is occurring in East Gippsland and the south-west? How can dance respond to the extinction crisis that is unfolding across regional Victoria?

DIRtywork is part of DIRt (Dance In Regional disaster zones), a project Rosalind initiated in 2017 with Vic McEwan, Andrew Morrish, Peter Fraser and local artists and ecologists which asks how dance and collaborative arts practice might embody, understand and connect to continuing, environmental destruction in East Gippsland. 

What can dance do? How can dance be more relevant in this time of accelerating species extinctions? Are there relationships between our dance habits and our land-use habits? What new practices must we develop?

DIRt has been supported by East Gippsland Art Gallery Bairnsdale, East Gippsland Shire Council, The Cad Factory NSW, Critical Path Sydney, Dancehouse Melbourne, Dance Limerick Ireland, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, Artlands, and the Regional Arts Fund. The Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund is provided through Regional Arts Victoria, administered in Victoria by Regional Arts Victoria.

Biography

Rosalind Crisp was born in Omeo, East Gippsland. She trained at the Victorian Ballet School, Melbourne and the European Dance Development Centre, the Netherlands. In 1996 she established the Omeo Dance studio in Sydney, which for ten years was the home of experimental dance research in Sydney. In 2002 she was invited to Paris by Michel Caserta, director of the Biennale du Val-de-Marne. Carolyn Carlson saw her performance and invited her to become the first Associate Artist of the Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson. The Atelier managed and toured Rosalind Crisp / Omeo Dance for ten years. Since 2003, Rosalind Crisp / Omeo Dance has created 16 new works, touring to over 100 festivals in Australia and internationally.

In 2015 the French Ministry of Culture awarded Rosalind a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, a distinction bestowed on only a handful of Australians, including Robyn Archer and Cate Blanchett. Her other awards include a NSW Women & Arts Fellowship, an Australian Mo award for best female performer and an honorary fellowship of the University of Melbourne-VCA. The foundation of her work is her ongoing studio research practice and her long-term collaborations with, amongst others: Céline Debyser, Helen Herbertson, Andrew Morrish, Bo Wiget, Isabelle Ginot and Susan Leigh Foster. Rosalind returned to live in East Gippsland in 2014. She currently works between East Gippsland and Europe.

Rosalind will be resident artist at WAG June 24-July 2 and then Chunky Move July 4-9 2019.

Photo by Andrew Morrish