Critical Path (NSW) has announced Eric Avery and Henrietta Baird as the two Indigenous dance artists selected to participate in its inaugural Emerging Choreographers’ Mentorship program.
The aim of this new program is to support emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait dance artists and help address the relatively low number of independent Aboriginal choreographers continuing to actively practice in the state. The program has been established as a result of additional funding from Arts NSW, under the NSW Aboriginal Arts and Cultural Strategy.
The Emerging Choreographers’ Mentorships program allows selected indigenous dance artists to identify a mid-career independent choreographer to act as mentors for them to develop their choreographic ideas, along with a network of workshops and residency research. “There is a real need for programs that specifically engage with emerging indigenous dance artists – there are many working outside of company structures and unfortunately, it is not uncommon for independent choreographers to lose energy in their struggle to sustain an active long term practice in the state,” says director of Critical Path Margie Medlin. “This mentorship project is a further step towards seeding a growing number of voices, range of stories and successful career pathways for Indigenous choreographers operating within the independent contemporary dance sector in NSW.”
Both Eric Avery and Henrietta Baird are NAISA Dance College graduates, and both are Sydney-based.
Avery recently completed a six month mentorship with the Australian Ballet. He has selected Vicki Van Hout as his mentor and will be exploring ways to use his Ngiyampaa language as the basis for developing dance movement. Baird has choreographed and performed for the Indigenous Survival Day concerts and choreographed PACT Youth Theatre’s Gathering Ground event in 2008. She will work with mentor Marilyn Miller to explore how movements made through storytelling can be reflected into contemporary dance performance. Henrietta has recently returned from Country Wujal Wujal in far North Queensland, where she researched native plants within culture. From this journey, she hopes to generate a new ‘natural dance’ vocabulary with the aim to eventually make a full length dance work.
Eric Avery. Photo: Lorna Munro.
