Be Bold Residency Artists

Choreographers and dancers

Yuiko Masukawa is a Japanese choreographer working with the ballet form in contemporary contexts. In 2019, she was awarded an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant to undertake a series of structured choreographic secondments with the New York City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet and Japanese contemporary choreographer, Toru Shimazaki.

Yuiko will work with Indian classical dance trained dancer Shriraam Theiventhiran. After meeting each other through Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographer Program, they were struck by the similarities between Indian classical dance and ballet.

In "why we are who we are" Yuiko and Shri are bringing together their expertises in classical dance, while also looking deeply into the role dance, classicism and migration has played in shaping their identities.

Image by Sasha Kane

Community artist and designer

Jennifer Tran is a performance designer and community arts engagement worker of Chinese and Vietnamese cultural heritage who lives, works and socialises in the western suburbs of Melbourne. She uses conversations around cooking, food and recipes to create bonds between women seniors, their families and communities.

Our Kitchen Stories is a culinary theatre experience that combines storytelling, performance, theatrical installation and making food. The themes of this work are about family, culture, memories and loss. This performance will be delivered in an immersive food installation with audience members taking part in the process of making their own steamed bun. As part of the experience, this project seeks to engage all five senses.

Image by Rachel Main

Theatre makers and arts educators

Nguvu Moja means "Stronger Together" in Swahili. Nguvu Moja provides opportunities for young people of African backgrounds to get involved in theatre and performance. The development of this project connects an ensemble of young people with professional African Australian performers. The young people will gain first-hand knowledge, practice performance techniques and discuss experiences of discrimination and other barriers in Australia to present the new work, Once On This Island.

An interpretation of the Olivier Award-winning musical, Once On This Island explores the life of a peasant girl on a tropical Afro-Caribbean Island who uses the power of love to bring people of different social classes together. Like many African folktales the work incorporate performative movements and a critical moral compass within the story which demonstrates a powerful intergenerational assigned mechanism for prevailing adversity and illustrating collective triumphs.

Book your tickets here.

Image shows Nguvu Moja

Theatre makers

Stéphanie Ghajar is a Lebanese-born Australian director and dramaturge. Her work delves into the human condition to explore the individual in deeply personal situations where the familiar motions of the everyday darken and veer towards the tragic. Her latest project, Zaffé, is a new immersive performance work-in-development that explores how young people in the Arabic diaspora deal with, heal from, and move on from displacement and loss.

Zaffé is a celebration. It invites audiences to take part in a wedding party in Australia. There is dancing, singing, and ululation, much like at the traditional celebration the work is named for. Yet something is awry—the bridal party is absent, and toasts break down into poems of longing for all that is missing here: loved ones across the sea, places forever changed, moments lost to the past.

Image by Ayman Kaake