Triple-bill treat marks 40 years of the Australasian Dance Collective
Australasian Dance Collective celebrates 40 years in 2025 with a rhapsodic triple bill dubbed Blue.
Forty years at the forefront of the ever-evolving contemporary dance field is a milestone few companies reach.
Brisbane’s award-winning Australasian Dance Collective – founded in 1984 and formerly known as Expressions Dance Company until 2018 – has defied the odds through generating works of universal resonance embraced by audiences and critics on home soil and abroad. ADC will celebrate that anniversary with triple-bill Blue at QPAC’s Playhouse, May 14-17.
The auspicious bridal rhyme “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” guided artistic director Amy Hollingsworth’s selections to embody past, present and future – and simplified her “overwhelming” challenge of distilling the ensemble’s essence from more than 180 works by 80 national and international choreographers.
During the artistic directorships of founder Maggi Sietsma and successor Natalie Weir (currently Queensland Ballet choreographer-in-residence), their annual full-length productions largely defined the ensemble’s identity.
An excerpt from Weir’s emotive journey through life-changing moments, When Time Stops, is not only thematically apt, it will also feature beloved original cast member Riannon McLean (who retired from ADC in 2013) in her first stage performance for three years. (McLean directed ADC’s Youth Ensemble 2019-2024.)
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The “new” piece will be world premiere Glass Teeth from Australian choreographer Melanie Lane, while “borrowed” global star Hofesh Schechter’s seminal In Your Rooms will feature his movement and music.
While Sietsma’s choreography isn’t represented in the triumvirate, her 24-year body of work and its legacy “will very much be a focal point of the season”, promises Hollingsworth, who came up with a way to interweave Sietsma’s artistry throughout the program.
“I don’t want to give too much away, because I am still communicating with Maggi (Sietsma now lives in Europe), but there’s a very special element to Blue, which will really highlight and feature her work,” Hollingsworth says. “There’ll be a lot of really beautiful and nuanced information and archival jewels throughout the theatre’s foyer to celebrate our 40 years, but we also are going to have an homage to Maggi inside the theatre.”
Another source of pride is ADC’s status as Australia’s only succession-structured performing arts company to be exclusively led by female artistic directors. So a triple bill featuring a work by each of the ADs might have seemed an obvious approach for the 40th anniversary program. But while Hollingsworth is a fine choreographer and has created several pieces since taking the reins in 2019, her approach has been predominantly curatorial – and that’s unlikely to change since she took on double duties as CEO last year.
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“I’m really interested in the broader landscape and the multitude of artists who have so many wonderful things to say,” she explains.
Melanie Lane had been one of the first choreographers Hollingsworth had commissioned as AD, so supporting “this brilliant choreographer who I think has an exceptional voice … felt like the right way to celebrate my thematic as a director”.
Currently it’s associate artistic director and company member Jack Lister who’s carrying the choreographic baton within ADC. He is continuing to push creative boundaries with Relic, the company’s first 2025 production, which will take place within the operational Urban Art Projects foundry at Northgate, March 7 to 9, and feature Opera Queensland soprano Leanne Kenneally alongside ADC artists.
Lister’s exploration of the memento mori movement first drew inspiration from its 16th and 17th century paintings in 2021’s Still Life, which he expanded into an award-winning film trilogy.
For Relic, Motorcross and the imposing industrial setting of UAP are the vehicle for a radical reimagining of the earlier iterations and take a rousing final lap through the ephemeral and the enduring, through delicacy and brutality.
Adding to the unique atmosphere, the performance will take place among “wooden crates and vessels holding great works of art while we investigate really beautiful vignettes exploring the concept of memento mori”, notes Hollingsworth.
Despite just announcing these two works for 2025, there is something big to come in the second half of the year – but Hollingsworth can’t reveal it yet.
“We have a really special project,” she says. “I cannot emphasise enough how excited we are about this project on our horizon that I’ve been working on since 2020.”
Our guess is that it might involve Brisbane Festival – but we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep audiences, old and new, engaged.
australasiandancecollective.com