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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Dancing against the clock

Amelia McQueen in her dance work “Soft Target” from last year’s festival.

ADELINA Larsson is the director of Canberra’s Short+Sweet Dance Festival, an offshoot of the hugely successful Short+Sweet drama initiative, founded several years ago by Mark Cleary from Newtown Theatre in Sydney, and now the biggest little-play festival in the world.

Like its big brother (or sister), the dance version of Short+Sweet places a 10-minute limit on each work, but that’s a long time in dance, so she’s been getting emails from choreographers saying: “Oh, I’ve only got six minutes”, but that’s fine.

Swedish-born Larsson, an independent dancer who studied choreography at the Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands (also the alma mater of Canberra’s Padma Menon) has been in Australia for four years and tells “CityNews”, with some pride, that she has just become an Australian citizen.

This is no amateur dance fest, she says, but rather a showcase of the best in emerging professionals.

This year’s participants mostly have dance degrees from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, Queensland University of Technology, or the Victorian College of the Arts.

This, in Larsson’s view, is lifting the game and the project also helps fill the gap for young dancers after they graduate, creating, as she says, “a platform to explore new ideas”.

One big success has been the “absolutely stunning” Eliza Sanders, Short+Sweet’s “young Canberra choreographer” for 2010 and about to take off for WAAPA. She’ll be presenting a work called “Two people together and at once”.

Other notable participants are Liz Lea, Alison Plevey, Kate MacDonald, Keira Mason Hill, LeeAnn Litton, Tegan Jones, Janine Proost and Tanya Voges.

Dancer-choreographer Carlee Mellow, from Chunky Move, Meryl Tankard, Ballet Lab, KAGE and S+S will hold an artist talk at 7.30pm on November 17, with the idea of “opening up new possibilities”.

Short+Sweet Dance, Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, 8pm, November 17-20. Bookings to 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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