1. No category

INTERCHANGE
CHOREOGRAPHIC EXCHANGE
PROSPECTUS
ABOUT
CRITICAL
PATH
Critical Path is Australia's leading
centre for choreographic enquiry,
research and development.
Our home is The Drill, a large
rehearsal space situated on the
shores of Rushcutters Bay in
central Sydney.
Critical Path was established in 2005 to ll
a recognised gap in the independent dance
sector providing a 'critical' pathway
through which professional dance-makers
could be supported to extend and innovate
their choreographic practice. Ten years on,
Critical Path stands proud as a unique and
signi cant contributor to the development
of contemporary choreography in Australia.
The calibre and creative output of our
alumni is testament to our ongoing
in uence and success.
I have been privileged in my career to
experience many international exchange
opportunities. These exchanges radically
altered my perceptions about my work,
and the power of dance to cross cultural
boundaries; they have had a remarkable
and enduring in uence on me - in
spatial design, in choreography,
in developing non verbal clarity in
communication, in creating works
of relevance to a given context.
SUE HEALEY
01
CRITICAL PATH EXCHANGES
One of the cornerstones of our work is
facilitating national and international artist
exchanges a part of our core vision to
broaden the horizons of contemporary
dance and nurture new collaborations and
visions for dance practice.
Over the last 10 years we have sent local
artists abroad to the UK, India, Japan and
Germany and have hosted over 100 artists
from around the globe at our home studio
in Sydney. We have proven expertise in
developing and producing world-class
choreographic workshops and exchanges,
and encourage new partner organisations
to work with us to cultivate even more
opportunities. Are you looking for a
professional artist-in-residence to visit your
school or university? Are you an arts
organisation looking for an international
partner?
Included in this booklet are pro les
highlighting 12 outstanding Australian
dance-makers who are alumni of Critical
Path's New South Wales residency and
exchange programs. They are all artists
who have developed unique approaches to
creative practice and an ability to share
these approaches through teaching and
through making innovative dance work.
MODELS FOR EXCHANGE
There are many tangible ways to connect
artists and organisations through exchange.
At Critical Path, we favour the residencyworkshop model. It gives artists time to
work in the studio on research and
development, and also share approaches to
practice with local artists. The bene t of
this model is that it is exible: residencies
can involve blue-sky research projects or
work towards a performance outcome; and
workshops can take the shape of weekend
masterclasses, choreographic workshops
varying in length between a day and a
week, or workshop projects of a few weeks
to months that culminate in public
showings. The program can incorporate
interdisciplinary collaboration, artist talks
or studio showings and other
performances.
All the artists featured here are engaged in
regular teaching alongside their
choreographic practices. An overview of
the kinds of workshops each artist
facilitates, along with performances they
have currently available for touring, is
included in each pro le.
02
image: Keren Ruki
LATAI TAUMOEPEAU
My everyday life is my practice, my research.
I'm trying very hard to prioritise my
cultural voice, and to commit to bringing
the voice of marginalised communities
to the frangipani-less foreground.
Folk Festival, Sydney Fringe Festival to
name a few. She has also toured
internationally to London, Germany, France,
Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong and New
Zealand.
Latai is a Punake, body-centred
performance artist; her story is of her
homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga,
and her birthplace, the Eora Nation,
Sydney, and everything far and in-between.
Her work activates Indigenous philosophies
and methodologies; cross-pollinating
ancient practices of ceremony with her own
contemporary performance processes to
re-interpret, re-generate and extend her
movement practice and its function in and
from Oceania. She has presented works at
Tanz im August, The Museum of
Contemporary Art, Carriageworks, The
Performance Space, Sydney Opera House,
Campbelltown Arts Centre, Casula
Powerhouse Arts Centre, The Australian
Museum, Brisbane Powerhouse, Woodford
Working across gallery, performance and
community contexts, Latai's work strongly
encounters the socio-political landscape of
Australia and beyond in its examinations of
race, class, dispossession, colonisation and
the female body politic. Recent work has
focused on the e ects of climate change on
low-lying islands in the South Paci c,
presenting visceral and sometimes
confronting images of the body in peril.
vimeo.com/lataitaumoepeau
Workshops: artist lecture/demonstration;
deconstructing cultural concepts for contemporary
performance
Works: Stitching (Up) the Sea (2014); Sideshow (2011)
03
DANCE + ENVIRONMENT
image: Natalie Ayton
DEAN WALSH
We are really quite ignorant about the many
natural environments that are pivotal to all
life remaining in a sustainable balance.
I'm interested to try and reignite a spark of
interest in knowing more about realms
that aren't our human everyday experiences.
Dean has worked in Australia and overseas
as a performer, director/choreographer and
teacher, working with companies such as
DV8 Physical Theatre, Stalker Theatre,
Australian Dance Theatre, Opera Australia,
The opera Project, Sydney Dance Company
and One Extra Dance. He has a long and
deeply held personal interest in marine
ecology, biology and interactive disciplines
(sur ng, snorkeling, scuba and breath-held
diving), which forms the basis for his latest
choreographic explorations. Since 1991 he
has devised more than 35 works from solos
through to small group performances.
Dean began devising a new movement
manual/system he calls PrimeOrderly,
which provides de nitions of the physical
language uncovered in his research into
subaquatic experience and marine realms.
Dean's marine research has been developed
in dialogue with scientists, conservation
communities, divers and dancers and
exchange of this type has been an essential
part of his developing work. The system
can be used as a tool for general practice
and training, referenced during educational
forums and is utlised by Dean in the
construction of new interdisciplinary
performance work.
Workshops: composition and structured
improvisation related to the PrimeOrderly system
Works: Under Pressure (2013); See An Enemy (2012)
In 2011-12, as part of his dance fellowship
from the Australia Council for the Arts,
04
image: Freespace Fest 2014
LEE WILSON & MIRABELLE WOUTERS (BRANCH NEBULA)
Our outlook as artists is fed by a ravenous
appreciation of so-called low brow culture;
kickboxing, wrestling, video arcades,
or just doing our shopping. We embrace
our eclectic interests and bring them into
the theatre to surprise audiences but also
to apotheosise these cultural energies.
Lee and Mirabelle are co-creators of
company Branch Nebula, founded in 1998.
They have developed a reputation for
making innovative works that explore
contemporary culture as a means of
creating access and speaking to a broad
audience. Collaborating with nonconventional performers, Branch Nebula
works in tandem with young street-style
artists to create new visions for engaging
with BMX, skating, parkour, breaking and
contemporary dance. Most recently, Branch
Nebula presented s.l.o.a.p. (space left over
after planning) in Hong Kong for the West
Kowloon Cultural District's Freespace Fest
2014 and at the URB Festival 2013 in
Helsinki, in each case engaging with local
artists. Concrete and Bone Sessions, a sitespeci c work for a skate park, premiered at
the Sydney Festival in 2013 and toured to
the Santiago a Mill Festival in 2014.
Their work represents a diverse range of
enquiry into the audience experience
including the award-winning Whelping Box,
which immerses the audience within a large
box, and Artwork, premiering in 2015, which
employs real people to perform on stage in
front of an audience for the rst time.
branchnebula.com
Workshops: collaborative performance making;
site-speci city; audience engagement
Works: Artwork (2015); Concrete and Bone Sessions
(2013); s.l.o.a.p. (2013); Whelping Box (2012);
Sweat (2010)
05
DANCE + URBAN SPACE
image: Amy Hetherington
NICK POWER
While my work pushes the boundaries of
the hip hop artform, it remains strongly
rooted in the culture of hip hop, using that
culture as its core tool of communication.
Nick has worked professionally for the past
14 years as a b*boy, choreographer, teacher
and festival director. He has facilitated
community cultural development
workshops, nurtured young and emerging
dancers, worked in regional centres and
remote Indigenous communities and
produced large-scale hip hop events and
festivals. He has choreographed shows for
companies such as Tracks Dance and
Stalker Theatre, and his work has toured
throughout Europe and Australia, and to
Hong Kong and Mexico. Nick is also the
founding director of the Platform Hip Hop
Festival, an annual celebration produced by
Carriageworks in Sydney including shows,
exhibitions, workshops and a national
dance competition.
One of a small group of choreographers
internationally fusing hip hop styles with
contemporary choreographic techniques
and dance theatre, recently he has been
facilitating an exchange between the Tiny
Toones crew from Cambodia and the D*City
Rockers from Darwin in Australia's north. In
2012, Nick was awarded the Australia
Council's dance residency at Cité
Internationale des Arts in Paris, where he
began choreographic research that led to
Cypher. This performance examines the
circular formation that occurs at jams and
battles as hip hop's most important ritual
space and as a source of language, tension,
rivalry and communication.
vimeo.com/nickpower
Workshops: breakdance; composition;
choreographing gesture in hip hop
Works: Cypher (2014)
06
image: Hayley Rose Photography
ROB MCCREDIE
I aim to treat young dancers as I would any
dancers, not making assumptions about
what they are willing to try. I want to craft
a kind of looking between the dancers and
the audience in which they are equally
responsible for that moment. When
someone looks directly at you it puts
you in a relationship with one another.
Rob is the Youth Company Director of
fLiNG Physical Theatre, a regional youth
dance company located in Bega, Australia.
Since graduating from the Victorian
College of the Arts in 2006, he has worked
as a performer with companies such as
Legs on the Wall and many independent
artists including, most recently, Jess
Devereux, Rebecca Jensen and Melissa
Jones. He also has a background as a
design assistant in theatre, lm and TV, and
has created set installations for
choreographers Fiona Bryant and Jo Lloyd.
Rob has an ongoing collaboration with
Holly Durant as HORO!, creating works that
integrate dance and design.
Audience experience is a through line to
Rob's work. Inviting the audience to
experience the work from di erent angles,
he experiments with gaze and interrupted
ows of movement to explore di erent
modes of watching. At fLiNG, Rob works
with an ensemble who range in ages from
14 to 20. In working with young people, Rob
notes that it is their intelligence, motivation
and supportive encouragement of each
other that makes exciting things happen.
robmccredie.tumblr.com
Workshops: dance technique; composition;
constructing spaces for dance
Works: Who Knows What (2010)
07
WORKING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
image: Gregory Lorenzutti
GHENOA GELA
I like to go back to my roots and I love
teaching kids. I'm dedicated to telling my
family's stories in a creative space that
opens up dialogue about Torres Strait
Islander culture, what dance and theatre
is and who its audience can be.
Ghenoa is a proud Torres Strait Islander
woman from Rockhampton, in the north of
Australia, and a graduate from NAISDA, the
national Indigenous dance school. She
performs across such diverse elds as
contemporary dance, dance theatre,
traditional dance, hip hop, theatre for
young people and circus working on
projects for both television and the stage.
She has performed nationally and
internationally with Circus Oz, Shaun
Parker Company, My Darling Patricia and
Vicki van Hout, and is an artist-in-residence
with Carriageworks. She is also a regular
and well-known presenter on Deadly Vibe
Australia's Move it Mob Style, an Indigenous
hip hop dance program for kids airing on
Australia's national public broadcaster the
ABC.
Ghenoa also does extensive work
facilitating workshops for young people in
urban, regional and remote communities
with ARMTour, Young, Black and Deadly
and Vibe Alive, to name just a few. She has
recently begun developing her own work,
inspired by her family's stories and culture.
Winds of Woerr premiered at the
Melbourne Next Wave Festival in 2014 and
tells of the creation of the Torres Straight
Islands through the Straight's four winds,
which mark the passage of time and the
coming and going of the seasons.
Workshops: urban dance; contemporary Torres
Straight Islander dance
Works: Winds of Woerr (2014)
08
CASE
STUDIES
CRITICAL PATH & ATTAKKALARI CENTRE FOR MOVEMENT
ARTS (IN)
We began working with Attakkalari in 2012
in a partnership that forms the pivotal
component of our growing networks in this
region.
We sent Australian choreographers to the
FACETS mentorship program in 2013 and
2015, where they worked in residence for
6 weeks and had the opportunity to present
their work in the celebrated Attakkalari
India Biennial. Attakkalari director
Jayachandran Palazhy facilitated a
workshop at Critical Path in 2012, and our
director Margie Medlin was a mentor at
FACETS in 2013 and directed Time Frames,
an outreach program for Attakkalari's
education program for which she was a
nalist in the Australian Arts Asia Awards.
In 2015, Critical Path will present the Indian
choreographer Hemabharathy Palani in
Sydney and Narelle Benjamin, one of the
artists featured in this booklet, will teach at
Attakkalari in their Talent Academy program.
This partnership is foundational to our
shared development of a bilateral
contemporary dance network between
Australia and India, and through Attakkalari's
work in the region, between Australia and
South Asia more broadly.
www.attakkalaribiennial.org
09
CRITICAL PATH & DANCE4 (UK)
Our partnership with Dance4 is our longest
running; we have been exchanging artists in
residence on an annual basis for close to 10
years. Two artists featured in the booklet,
Martin del Amo and Miranda Wheen
represent the span of this partnership:
Martin was one of our rst artists sent to
the UK, in 2006, to work with UK live artists
Traci Kelly and Richard Hancock; and
Miranda along with Matt Cornell are our
latest, in residence at Dance4's studios in
late 2014.
development of challenging, researchdriven dance practice. To date, Critical Path
has hosted seven UK artists in Sydney, and
has sent seven Australian artists to Dance4.
The format of each individual residency
might be di erent, and is negotiated
according to current context and the artists
involved; but what is common is a mutual
dedication by the 2 organisations to the
continuation of the partnership and
CRITICAL PATH'S RESEARCH ROOM
In addition to studio residencies, Critical
Path works with cultural agencies to host
international artists in residence for up to
3 months in our Research Room, a small
o ce equipped with research and video
editing facilities onsite at the Drill Hall.
We have had artists in the Research Room
from Brussels, Brazil, Singapore, Germany
and the Netherlands working on
choreographic-related projects.
For example, in 2014 we hosted André Bern
from Brazil who shared his research project
Correspondances which is based on the
idea of sharing movement content via the
internet, and Peter Lenaerts a composer
and photographer from Brussels who
developed his project MicroSleepDub
about micro sound, architecture and
urbanism.
10
image: Heidrun Löhr
NARELLE BENJAMIN
When you become aware of perception you
forget about the action. The perception
becomes the focus one's personal
relationship to the incoming information.
This is when surprising movement
patterns emerge.
As an independent choreographer, Narelle
has developed an intricate and physically
exciting movement practice that combines
her training in Western contemporary
dance with a lifelong study and practice of
yoga, and more recently incorporating her
study of Shaolin martial arts. As a dancer,
she has worked with most of the principal
companies in Australia, including Australian
Dance Theatre, Chunky Move and Bangarra
Dance Theatre, and has choreographed for
Sydney Dance Company, the Australian
Ballet and One Extra Dance, among others.
Council for the Arts Dance Fellowship. In
addition to choreography for the stage,
Narelle has won awards for her dance on
screen work.
Somatic and kinaesthetic enquiries are at
the core of Narelle's current choreographic
research: her physical training in yoga,
martial arts and contemporary dance
becomes a backbone from which to explore
moving from instinct and the senses.
vimeo.com/narellebenjamin
Workshops: yoga; dance technique;
somatic exploration
Works: Hiding in Plain Sight (2014); KAAL (2013);
No Body (2012)
Her rst full-length work, In Glass, received
an Australian Dance Award in 2011, and she
is the 2014-15 recipient of the Australia
11
(INTER)CULTURAL PRACTICES
image: Heidrun Löhr
VICTORIA HUNT
How might we prepare ourselves to fully
inhabit a place? We are all from the land but how do we have a relationship of
reciprocity to that place, our ancestors,
our heritage? This is a political act,
before we can even begin dancing.
Victoria is an Australian-born artist working
across dance, performance art, education
and cultural practice. Her tribal a liations
are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata,
Kahungunu Maori, English and Irish. She is
a founding member of Bodyweather dance
company De Quincey Co. since 1999, and
has toured internationally with MAU (200607). Since 2008 she has been the dance
educator at EORA College, a centre for
Indigenous training in Sydney, and has led
professional movement classes since 2001.
Victoria's core movement practice is
Bodyweather, and so relationship to place,
image and sensory-based work are all
primary approaches to working with the
body. This is combined with research into
her Paci c cultural heritage. Over the last
decade she has been conducting research
into Hinemihi, a female ancestor and
ceremonial space connected to her Maori
heritage, whose story is danced in two
recent works, the latter of which toured to
the ORIGINS Festival of First Nations in
London in 2013. These and other works
form an ongoing examination of the
processes of objecti cation and legacies of
colonisation for Indigenous peoples.
Visually powerful and arresting, her work
moves between installation, video, and
multimedia performance.
victoriahuntperformance.wordpress.com
Workshops: Bodyweather; site-speci c
performance making; image work in improvisation
Works: Tangi (2013); Day of Invigilation (2005);
Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka (2012);
performance improvisation
12
image: Judd Overton
SUE HEALEY
As a choreographer, I am immersed in the
visual eld in both the acts of seeing and
being seen. The dance performer is an
expert in negotiating this territory
As a moving image-maker, I must ask
how do we see ? In our screen-based
culture we experience an overwhelming
deluge of moving images on a daily basis.
A choreographer, educator, lmmaker and
installation artist, Sue is one of Australia's
foremost dance-makers and widely
regarded as one of the region's nest
dance- lmmakers. Originally from New
Zealand, she received the prestigious
Australia Council Creative Fellowship in
2013-14 and was recently made an
Honorary Fellow of the Victorian College of
the Arts, University of Melbourne. With her
own Sue Healey Company she has toured
numerous dance works for theatres,
galleries, speci c sites and screens across
Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. She has
an enduring connection with Japan, having
made 4 major works for the Aichi Arts
Centre in Nagoya and Red Brick Warehouse
in Yokohama.
The crafting of movement, time and space
is at the heart of Sue's work, experimenting
as she does at the boundaries between the
choreographic and the lmic. She often
works in series, making a live work, lm,
video installation and/or installation
performance as a collection of works that
are conceptually linked. Her current work
explores the nature of visual perception.
suehealey.com.au
Workshops: dance technique and composition;
choreography for the camera; video editing;
artist lecture/screening
Works: Virtuosi (2013); Variant (2012);
Curiosities (2009); As You Take Time (2007)
13
DANCE + MEDIA ART
image: Richard Freeman
ALEJANDRO ROLANDI
My interest in interactive technology was
born from a desire to be able to distort or
transform the appearance of the human
body. My media work is intrinsically linked
to my dance practice Contact Improvisation
is the glue that keeps everything together.
Making the light wearable was about
nding out how to move with it.
Alejandro is a Sydney-based performance
artist, originally from Buenos Aries,
Argentina. The foundation of his movement
practice is Contact Improvisation (CI), and
he is a highly sought-after teacher of CI by
universities and dance companies. Since
2010, Alejandro has begun to develop a
choreographic practice that investigates
ways to build scores and sequences using
the language of Contact Improvisation.
Alejandro has also worked with major
physical theatre companies in Australia
including Legs on the Wall and Stalker
Theatre, and is the director of Strings
Attached, a dance theatre collective that
creates work using aerial systems and large
custom-built steel structures. In 2011 he
completed a 4-month residency at the
University of Technology Sydney
researching interactive technologies for
performance; and, with Stalker, he has
worked as a digital artist on several
productions, designing wearable lighting
and projection systems that utilise
prototype remote-controlled wearable
LEDs. He recently worked on Pixel
Mountain (2013), a collaboration with
Korean artists for the Gwacheon Festival
and Hi Seoul.
stringsattached.com.au
Workshops: Contact Improvisation; interactive
technologies for performance
Works: In Common, Opposite Tangents,
Time and Landscape (2014); with Stalker Theatre,
Pixel Mountain (2014), Phosphori (2013),
Encoded (2012)
14
image: Matt Cornell
MIRANDA WHEEN
When I dance I always try to frame it as
research. Particularly when training or
improvising, these times when my focus
is very attuned to sensation and the body,
I try to make discoveries and deepen my
understanding of my dance, and the way
I think about dance.
A highly versatile performer, Miranda has
collaborated with a number of companies
and choreographers throughout Australia
and internationally, including: Shaun Parker
and Company, Mirramu Dance Company,
Restless Dance Theatre, Martin Del Amo,
Marrugeku, Stalker Theatre and the Tsai
Jui-Yueh Dance Foundation in Taiwan,
among others. Miranda has studied in
Senegal, West Africa, with choreographer
Germaine Acogny at L'Ecole des Sables, the
International School for Contemporary and
Traditional African Dance, and for 3 years
was a participant in the International
Indigenous Choreographic Laboratories
held in Sydney, Broome and Auckland.
Miranda's current research draws ideas of
training and performance into close
relationship with one another: she has been
developing methods of training for the
independent dancer that focus on inherited
techniques and methodologies as a basis
for exploration. Her experiences with a vast
array of collaborators, teachers and
choreographers thus become corporeally
embedded data a corporeal archive to
which she builds a high level of attunement
for further choreographic investigations,
whether in the devising process of another
choreographer or her own emerging
choreographic practice.
mirandawheen.com
Workshops: contemporary/modern dance technique;
methods for dancer training
Works: Between Two and Zero (2014);
Safe Hands (2014), Yes I Can (2013)
15
THINKING THROUGH THE BODY
image: Heidrun Löhr
MARTIN DEL AMO
As dancers, we are trained to perform
extremely complex movement material
and make it look e ortless. It's precisely
our training, however, that sometimes
makes us forget how powerful a simple
gesture can be, or a moment of stillness,
or a mere ick of an isolated body part.
Originally from Germany, Martin started
out as solo artist acclaimed for his fulllength solos fusing idiosyncratic movement
and intimate storytelling. He has also built a
strong reputation as creator of group works
and solos for others. His Helpmann Awardnominated Anatomy of an Afternoon, which
premiered at the Sydney Opera House in
2012, was recently presented with great
success at Southbank Centre in London. His
work has toured nationally and
internationally to the UK, Japan and Brazil.
Fundamental to Martin's movement
practice is a detailed set of strategies and
exercises what he calls 'parameter
work' that build the body's sensory
awareness through structured
improvisation. These strategies have been
developed to re ect his key choreographic
concerns (such as corporeal fragmentation,
the relationship of movement to stillness
and the manipulation of the body by
external forces), and have been applied to
work with a diverse range of
performers from highly trained
contemporary dancers to actors and
untrained community performers. A valued
teacher, Martin regularly facilitates
workshops for a wide range of arts
companies and has worked extensively as a
consultant, dramaturg and mentor.
martindelamo.com
Workshops: solo performance making; composition;
dramaturgy; improvisation
Works: Little Black Dress Suite (2013);
Anatomy of an Afternoon (2012);
Mountains Never Meet (2011)
16
INTERNATIONAL &
INTERCULTURAL
DIALOGUE
Australia is a big country in the Asia-Paci c
region; we are historically positioned
between Europe and Asia with a culture
shaped by at least 50,000 years of
continued, unbroken Indigenous
storytelling and much more recently, by
migration from around the world. This
history and culture has helped to form an
international outlook in the arts in Australia.
According to the Australia Council for the
Arts, 1 in 3 Australian artists has engaged in
international work.
Many of the dance artists featured in this
booklet have been involved in making and
presenting work overseas either through
existing Critical Path exchange programs,
through other residency programs or
through their own international touring.
At Critical Path we see important bene ts
in international and intercultural exchange
for both our artists and our organisation:
Establishing the grounds for long-lasting
links between artists
Seeding new collaborations and
engagement across distances
Challenging approaches to practice, both
aesthetically and culturally
Forging new networks for creative learning,
research and development, and
presentation
17
Dance is so deeply linked to culture,
place and people. Exchange, particularly
international or cultural exchange,
seems essential to challenge and broaden
bodily assumptions, methodologies,
habits, ideas and processes.
Collaboration that involves the exchange
of physical languages cannot help but
in uence your dance and your ways
of thinking about dance.
MIRANDA WHEEN
It is a great luxury to think objectively
about your own practice; to look at it
from another perspective certainly
breathes new life and brings
inspiration to your work.
CONTACT US
We welcome you to contact us for more
information.
This booklet provides an overview of
Critical Path s approach to international
artist exchange. Begin a conversation with
us and we can work with you to build a
residency-workshop program that is
tailored to your organisation, provide
referral to artists, discuss hosting and
interning opportunities at the Drill and
perhaps nd links to multilateral programs
in conjunction with our established
partners.
LEE WILSON
18
The Drill, 1c New Beach Rd, Rushcutters Bay
PO Box 992, Edgecli , NSW 2027, Australia
+61 2 9362 9403 | [email protected]
Cover image: Margie Medlin, Improvisational Practices Symposium Bat Cave curated by Emma Saunders
Critical Path is an initiative of Arts NSW, with program funding from the Australia Council, the Australian
Government's arts funding and advisory body.