IN a canny move to mark International Dance Day on April 29, the Canberra Theatre’s “New Works” program, has picked up on the fact that two of our dance artists, James Batchelor and Liz Lea, have been working on the international stage. 

First up in “Batchelor + Lea”, a delicious double bill showing off our proudest dance exports, will be Batchelor’s “Shortcuts to Familiar Places”. 

When I catch up by phone to Berlin with Batchelor, he tells me he still thinks of his work as existing between Europe and Australia, with his home town, Canberra, as his Australian base. 

“It’s nice to present alongside Liz; two Canberra artists working internationally, but I also really believe in contributing to the arts scene in Canberra on an ongoing basis,” he says.

Proof is in the fact that he performed “Shortcuts” as a work-in-progress solo in the grasslands at the Gungahlin Arts Festival in 2021 and will also create a new piece with Canberra Dance Theatre’s Golds (Growing Old Disgracefully) troupe – “I love this intergenerational ripple,” he says. 

Transportation being very easy in Europe, he conducts a thriving dance practice, James Batchelor and Collaborators, together with musician Morgan Hickinbotham and former Canberra dancer Chloe Chignell, who lives in Brussels, just a hop away. 

“Once in Europe, you’re in Europe,” Batchelor says, adding that he has a busy schedule, creating a work for 20 dancers at his alma mater, the Victorian College of the Arts, and a mainstage show in Sweden, to name two projects. 

“Shortcuts” is a homage to his Canberra teacher, QL2’s Ruth Osborne and to her artistic forbear, Gertrud Bodenwieser, the Austrian dancer who fled the Nazis in 1938 and made an indelible impact on Australian dance. 

There’s also the involvement of 107-year-old Eileen Kramer, a student of Bodenwieser, now living in a nursing home in Sydney, where Batchelor has visited her. 

There are three parts – a solo where Batchelor shows the “soft and delicate” hand language of Bodenwieser, a duet with Chignell and a second duet where Batchelor and Chignell circle around each other. Interwoven is a video collage of archival footage with studio recordings in which Batchelor, Ruth Osborne and Carol Brown bring Bodenwieser’s style to life while Kramer shows the hand gestures. 

It is no secret that “Red”, the second work, is a retelling in dance of 2017 “CityNews” Artist of the Year Liz Lea’s personal battle with endometriosis.

Lea is a true Canberra mover and shaker, having founded the DANscienCE Festival at CSIRO Discovery, also establishing the Gold company and the national dance summit, “Bold”.

“Red” is a one-woman show, although wherever Lea goes, she engages senior dancers to help her tell a story, which is as hilarious as it is sad.

It’s also about dance, and like Batchelor, Lea pays homage to her training, which was in European and Indian traditions.

Talking of which, she took it to the 43rd Vikram Sarabhai Festival held in Ahmedabad, Gujarat recently. That’s where she had trained years ago in the classical form of Bharatanatyam.

“It was a really exciting affair,” Lea tells me, “I was afraid I might get arrested [because of the subject matter] but I didn’t.”

“The audience got into it as if it were a Bollywood movie,” she reports, responding to the mix of dialogue and dance. 

During the pandemic, she had performed “Red” for a Canberra Theatre online initiative to keep theatre alive.

But, Lea reports, it was actually our “CityNews” report on the work from the Edinburgh Fringe that prompted then manager of the “New Work” program, Adam Deusien, to program “Red” into The Playhouse this year.

“Red” is a searingly personal show and like many artists who’ve been playing themselves on stage, she’s ready to put it to bed and start work on a new show, “Diamond”. 

But not before she performed it just once more, in Brighton, UK, on May 5. That was cancelled because of covid a couple of years ago, but after Cath James, the Australian-born director of South East Dance, saw it in Edinburgh, she booked her in again.

“Batchelor + Lea”, The Playhouse, 3pm, April 29.