A brand new contemporary dance company has been announced for the Gold Coast.
Called The Farm, the company will be jointly directed by Gavin Webber and Grayson Millard.
Webber was artistic director of Townsville’s Dance North from 2005 to 2009. Since then he has worked extensively in Europe, in particular as resident choreographer for Theater Freiburg in Germany. He and Millard jointly ran the internationally successful groups Splinter Group and Animal Farm Collective (based between Berlin and Australia).
Webber recently returned to Australia with his partner, Kate Harman, for the birth of their son, and settled in Coolangatta. The timing was prescient. The City of Gold Coast council had just adopted a $1.2 million cultural action plan in the lead-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games, with arts chief Robyn Archer as advisor. It took up The Farm as its main theatre company, and has provided it with a $100,000 seeding grant.
Webber plans to run the company as a “network” or collective, but with himself and Millard streamlining the decision process. They will draw on their many artistic collaborators from within Australia and overseas.
The Gold Coast is not a place that is known for its arts prowess. But that is exactly what the City Council is seeking to redress, and Webber welcomes the challenge. “I like the idea of producing work that doesn’t fit people’s perceptions of a place,” Webber says, “I enjoyed that in Townsville too.
“I always thought that the Gold Coast was big towers and beach and boobs and botox, but . . . there’s quite of lot of stuff happening behind the scenes.”
He has already established links with the Northern Rivers Performing Arts Centre, the Brisbane Festival and the local Bleach Festival. He hopes the company will eventually also establish dance classes and a youth ensemble.
The company hopes to stage its first work, Cockfight, toward the end of 2015.