AFTER several covid-thwarted attempts, dance artist and former “CityNews Artist of the Year”, Liz Lea, is at last embarking on her third “BOLD” dance summit.

In a five-day “eclectic mix” of what she calls “very different traditions, all creating legacy and heritage,” the 2022 edition of the event will go indoors, outdoors, live, online and range from talks about dance to sheer pleasure to create “a bold celebration of all moving bodies”.

Like Alison Plevey‘s dance production “LESS” at Dairy Road, it’s part of “Enlighten 2022” and also links into the National Library’s coming exhibition, “On Stage: Spotlight on Our Performing Arts”.

“BOLD” will swing into action at the National Film and Sound Archive on March 2 with an opening by patron Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and ACT Arts Minister Tara Cheyne.

That will be followed by a screening of a series of short films from Sue Healey and Eileen Kramer, Gail Hewton and Ripe Dance, Jen Brown and Eric Avery, Mira Balchandran Gokul and Elinor Randle, then the Australian premiere of “Dance with a Bullet”, the story of a 27-year-old Iraqi male dancer Anmar Taha, who survived being shot in Baghdad by Muslim extremists and built a new life for himself in Sweden.

Lea has reached across the territory to five locations, the Canberra Theatre Centres, the NFSA, Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centre, the NLA and the National Portrait Gallery.

On March 3 and 4, the BOLD22 Conference will take place at the National Library both in situ and online, while 15 workshops will run throughout the event.

Keynote speakers will be 107-year-old dance artist Eileen Kramer, still going strong, who will converse with dance filmmaker Sue Healey. 

Larrakia man and visionary director of NT Dance Company, Gary Lang, will appear virtually to describe how he uses multicultural dancers to tell his people’s stories on the local, national and international stage, while scholar Michelle Potter will discuss live the late Kristian Fredrikson’s designs for “The Revenger’s Tragedy.”

The conference closes with the BOLD Lecture, “Point of the Spear”, given in the memory of Scotland-based Australian dance artist Janis Claxton by disabled choreographer, director and dancer Marc Brew, who will appear virtually to share his personal experience of the importance of being an advocate for accessibility and inclusion. 

The serious dance performances begin with “Goddess”, by Tammi Gissell, Agal Dance Company, Yolanda Lowatta, Charlie Wan, Somebody’s Aunt, Anca Frankenhaeuser, Debora di Centa, Dalman, Canberra’s first inclusive dance company, the Chameleon Collective at the National Portrait Gallery on March 4.

Lea is never above having fun with dance so has choreographed a Saturday night show called “A BOLD Mix”, at the QL2 Dance Studios, with “a magnificent mix” of male dancers, including Ryuichi Fujimura, Lucky Lartey, Patrick Harding Irmer, Chris Wade, Harry Morrisey, Danny Riley and Chidambaram R. Suresh, together with some footage from Singapore’s Maya Dance Theatre.

The BOLD Festival, March 2-6, details at theboldfestival.com