Australian Ballet residency

The successful recipients of the Australian Ballet's annual Residency Program have been announced: they are Prue Lang and Deanne Butterworth. 

The two choreographers will receive the use of a rehearsal space and facilities at the Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre in 2024/2025, as well as a grant of $18,000 each to support them over their residency period.

Hailing from Melbourne, Lang is an experienced performer and choreographer. She will take up her residency in April, while the company is in Sydney performing Carmen and Études / Circle Electric. She will use this opportunity to commence the creation of her new work POESIS, which brings together two exceptional award-winning performers Amber McCartney and Benjamin Hancock with renowned composer and DJ Chiara Costanza. With this work Lang "aims to explore dance that celebrates the virtuosic and the exquisite, drawn from a vibrant array of physical movement".

Butterworth is also from Melbourne. She will commence her residency in 2025 to crystalise her new work, Half Half. A contemporary production juxtaposing rigorously complex dancing with a slowing down of movement, "Half Half will investigate the multiplicity of dancing, examining attention, duality and opposition in physical and mental states of being".

In announcing the award, the company stated it received a "high volume of applications from choreographers around the nation". Lang and Butterworth were selected by a panel comprising of the AB's Artistic Director David Hallberg,
internationally renowned choreographer, Bebe Miller, multi-award-winning choreographer Stephanie Lake and CEO and Artistic Director of Melbourne's Dancehouse, Josh Wright.