2020 KEIR CHOREOGRAPHIC AWARD JURY
The Keir Choreographic Award (KCA) is a national biennial award dedicated to the commission, presentation, promotion and dissemination of new Australian choreography. KCA invites a national and internarional jury to commission 8 artists. The Jury are tasked with the responsibility of selecting the eight new commissions to compete in the semi-finals at Dancehouse and awarding the $50k cash award to one artist at the finals at Carriageworks in Sydney.
The all-star 2020 KCA jury tasked with the responsibility of selecting the eight new commissions include Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman artist, writer and curator, Paola Bala; influential Norwegian choreographer and performer Mette Edvardson; French curator and presenter Serge Laurent; author and critic Claudia la Rocco; as well as Japanese experimental choreographer and former Dumb Type member Takao Kawaguchi.
Paola Balla is a Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman artist, curator, writer & lecturer & a current PhD candidate at Victoria University & lectures with Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Centre. Paola is a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara woman (First Nations Victoria), whose res research focuses on Indigenous women's art and activism, and its role in disrupting public spaces. Recent curatorial projects include: Executed in Franklin Street, City Gallery (2015), Sovereignty, ACCA, (2016) Unfinished Business, perspectives on art & feminism, ACCA (2017). Recent projects include; First Nations Dialogues at Performance Space New York, workshops at Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, the National Gallery of Australia's Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program, the UK's Southbank Women of the World Festival, as well as delivering key note addresses at Victoria University, Emerging Writers Festival, WOW, ACCA, The Stella Prize & Girls Write Up. Paola's curatorial projects have been commissioned by Victoria University, the City of Melbourne, Kingston Art Gallery, Manningham City Council, Maroondah Council and her work is held in private collections and by CQ University, City of Melbourne, Victoria University and Federation University. Paola's writing has been published by The Lifted Brow, Etchings Indigenous, Writers Victoria, Artlink, Freize (UK), SBS & NITV. She is a member of the Blak Brow Collective who edited the Blak Brow 2018 for The Lifted Brow. Currently Paola serves on the board of the Indigenous Advisory Program for FCAC.
Mette Edvardsen is a Norwegian choreographer and performer based in Brussels since 1996. Although her works span different media and formats such as video and the written word, her interests are best placed in the performing arts as a practice and a situation. She has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects and has developed her solo work extensively since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer. A retrospective of her work was presented at Black Box theatre in Oslo in 2015. Mette is structurally supported by Norsk Kulturråd (2017 -2020), BUDA Arts Centre Kortrijk (2017 - 2020) and apap-Performing Europe 2020 – a project co-funded by Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. She is currently a research fellow at Oslo National Academy of the Arts and associated artist at Black Box Theater in Oslo. She is an associated artist at Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen in Normandie (France) for the period 2019-2021.
Serge Laurent studied Art History before beginning his career at the Artier Foundation as deputy curator. After four years of curating their exhibitions program, he was appointed curator of the performing arts program and initiated the famous Nomadic Evenings, which quickly became a staple in the experimental multi-disciplinary arts ecology in Paris, which still continue today. From 1997 to 2002, he was the inaugural director of the Dijon dance festival, Nouvelles Scenes and in 1998, he curated the first performing arts program at the Printemps de Cahors festival – a video and photographic art festival. He later became the Director of Performing Arts at the Centre Pompidou Paris until April 2019, when he was appointed Director of Dance and Arts programs at the Maison Van Cleef et Arpels in Paris.
Takao Kawaguchi (b. 1962) was a member of the Japanese multimedia performance company Dumb Type from 1996 to 2008, during which time he also worked independently with sound and visual artists to produce video works such as: DiQueNoVes (Say You Don't See) in 2003, D.D.D.- How Many Times Will My Heart Beat Before It Stops? (2004), Good Luck (2008) and TABLEMIND (2011). From 2008 he began the solo performance series a perfect life, the 6th work of which, From Okinawa to Tokyo, was presented at the 5th Yebisu Eizo Festival at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2013. Recently he's approached Butoh in The Sick Dancer (2012) based on the text of the Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi, and About Kazuo Ohno ― Reliving the Butoh Diva's Masterpieces (2013-). The latter was shown at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in 2016; nominated for the NYC Bessie Award for 2016-17; and was presented at Theatre de la ville a Paris (Festival d’automne a Paris) in October 2018. The piece has been performed 70 times at over 30 cities around the world including Berlin, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, and Bangkok among others, and still touring to date. Latest works include: TOUCH OF THE OTHER (Los Angeles 2015; Tokyo in 2016) which was based on the archive materials of sociological studies of male-to male impersonal sex at public places from ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in LA; and solo dance BLACKOUT (2018, Tokyo).
Claudia La Rocco’s work explores hybridity and improvisation, moving between criticism, poetry, fiction, and performance. Her books include the selected writings The Best Most Useless Dress (Badlands Unlimited) and the sf novel petit cadeau (The Chocolate Factory theater). She was a critic and reporter for The New York Times from 2005-2015 and is Editorial Director of SFMOMA’s interdisciplinary commissioning platform Open Space.
PREVIOUS KCA JURYS
2018
ANNA CY CHAN (HK)
LUCY GUERIN (AUS)
ISHMAEL HOUSTON JONES (USA)
ESZTER SALAMON (BE/FR)
CHRISTOPHE SLAGMUYLDER (BE)
MEG STUART (GE/BE)
2014
MARTEN SPANGBERG
BECKY HILTON
MATTHEW LYONS
PHILLIP KEIR
JOSEPHINE RIDGE
2016
BOJANA CVEJIC
PIERRE BAL BLANC
ATLANTA EKE
PHILLIP KEIR
SARAH MICHELSON
WENDY MARTIN
The 2020 Keir Choreographic Award is presented by Dancehouse, Carriageworks and the Keir Foundation, with support from the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
