AUSTRALIAN DANCE WEEK 2023
The Ausdance network promotes dance in all its forms every year during Australian Dance Week.
Ausdance ACT hosts the largest Australian Dance Week program in Australia. Throwing the spotlight on a thriving and diverse local dance scene from studio classes, workshops and activities for many ages with loads of free classes and events.
In 2023 we presented events featuring high quality professional performance, community events and workshops.
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'Hillscape' By Australian Dance Party
'Hillscape' was co-commissioned by Ausdance ACT 2023 Australian Dance Week and Canberra International Music Festival as part of Seeds of Life at the Arboretum.
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Choreographed by Australian Dance Party’s Ashlee Bye with composition by Dan Walker, 'Hillscape' was performed by Ashlee Bye, Yolanda Lowatta and Patricia Hayes Cavanagh with the support of Australian Dance Party.
'We enter the vastness of the landscape to celebrate the Sisyphean cycle of generation and regeneration. Expanding and connecting into strong networks to negotiate the precariousness of the ecosystem, we reach out of the earth to climb and tumble, to bustle and thrive'.
'Hillscape' the film premiered at the opening of Ausdance ACT 2024 Australian Dance Week at Canberra Museum and Gallery.
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Videography Cowboy Hat Films
2023 International Dance Day Message is by dancer and choreographer YANG Liping.
Photo credit: Yunnan Yang Liping Art & Culture Company
YANG Liping is a member of the Bai ethnic group from Dali, Yunnan Province. She is a National First-class Dancer and the vice chairman of China Dancers Association.
A lover of dance from her early childhood, Yang never underwent formal dance training, but with her astonishing natural talent she became a quite unique and distinguished dancer in China. She won nationwide fame for her performance of her original dance piece Spirit of the Peacock in 1986, which is elegant and dreamlike. Yang's main representatives: Spirit of the Peacock, Moonlight, Two Trees, Love of the Peacock and so on.
She is the director, choreographer and lead dancer in the famous dance drama Dynamic Yunnan, Tibetan Mystery, Echoes of Shangri-La, The Peacock, Peacock Winter and the director of dance theatre Under Siege, Dynamic Huangshan, Dynamic Piangtan，Rite of Spring, Apeng & Jinhua.
Yang Liping is constantly exploring new concepts and presentations in the art of dance. In an effort to adapt dance in the era of Metaverse, Starting from 2020, she created and directed three of the “Chinese Zodiac Dance Series Art Films” - Spring Ox, Roaring Tiger, and Jade Rabbit and Chang'e.
As a household known name in China, Yang Liping and her performances had won a large numbers awards: the gold award for 20th Century Chinese Classics of Dance; the highest honours at the Osaka International Exchange Centre; best dance poetry, best female lead, best choreography, best costume design and outstanding performance awards at the 4th China “Lotus Awards". In 2011, Yang Liping appears as one of the Chinese Beauty in the China Image - People advertisement broadcast in Times Square, New York City. As a versatile talent, she also wrote, directed and performed in the film Sunbird, which won the Grand Jury’s award at the Montreal International Film Festival.