Dance Week is always a joyous time in the Canberra arts scene and 2024 looks to be no exception. 

It always begins with International Dance Day, celebrated annually on April 29 to mark the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre, who created modern ballet.

For many years now Dance Day and Dance Week have been at the centre of Ausdance ACT’s work.

I caught up with Ausdance ACT director Cathy Adamek, who is keen to talk up Co-Lab:24, two evenings of immersive, interdisciplinary and improvised performance by Alison Plevey’s company, the Australian Dance Party. 

Ausdance has commissioned this year’s iteration, with support from Canberra Theatre Centre’s New Works program.

Other Dance Week activities include an open morning tea for local dance studio participants, which will include a talk about the Safe Dance movement, which these days takes in psychological and cultural safety as well as physical care. 

But there’s a lot more: it begins with a night of Afro dance at the Passion & Purpose Academy, Harrison Public School, and an adult beginner ballet class with Matthew Shilling at MAKS Ballet Studios in Mitchell, both on April 30.

Then there’s an open class with the Deaf Butterflies, suitable for deaf and hearing impaired, at Belconnen Arts Centre on May 3; the Fabulous Fan-Veil Workshop with Jazida at Gorman Arts Centre on May 4 and the Jam Cabinet’s street-dance platform, Show Us Your Sauce, in Garema Place on May 5. 

But without doubt the centrepiece of this year’s Dance Week program is the Co.lab commission – a new creation by the Australian Dance Party.

The title may sound unpromising, but “that’s because that’s exactly what it is,” Plevey tells me. 

“It’s instant and it’s collaborative,” she says.

“We’ve been doing Co.lab since 2017… and it has led to some amazing collaborations all aimed at exploring artistic practice, at the moment.”

Among their many collaborations, one of the chief ones has been with Canberra cellist Alex Voorhoeve, who has featured in ADP works such as Symbiosis, From the Vault and Strings Attached.

Voorhoeve has been working with the company regularly for two hours every Friday morning as both he and the dancers improvise, with the aim of understanding how their art works. 

Co-Lab:24 will be seen in private on International Dance Day itself and then in two public performances.

Plevey and ADP member Sara Black will be joined by guest dance artist Melanie Lane, who divides her time between Canberra, where her mother lives, and Melbourne, where, at The Substation, she’s been carrying out similar investigative dance explorations. 

Voorhoeve will be playing, along with Art Music Award winner Sia Ahmed, whose song and music Plevey says will create “a different texture of the sound in the space”. 

Meantime, visual artist Nicci Haynes, famous for her artworks created simultaneously with music at Richard Johnson’s SoundOut music festivals, will be on stage creating onsite visual art and “an immersive feeling” for the audience.

“How to colour in the picture will be part of the in-the-moment practice that I think is very exciting and very different to witness,” Plevey says.

Co-Lab:24, Courtyard Studio, April 30 and May 1. Dance Week 2024, all around Canberra.