By arts editor Helen Musa

There are few busier dance artists in Australia than Liz Lea, 2017 CityNews Artist of the Year, champion of diversity and dance, and still a formidable stage dancer who, in August, presented Diamond, the second work in a planned trilogy.

Now, as part of both the BOLD and Craft + Design Canberra festivals, she’ll be staging a double bill of dance works themed around design, dance, disability and dissent, titled ALTER.

Lea, who directs three festivals, DANscienCE, BOLD and I Dance, has also created three science-inspired children’s shows and, now trained in Audio Description, has begun developing an app to provide AD in venues. She also created The Stellar Company, through which she has launched the Chamaeleon Collective, Canberra’s first inclusive dance company.

For the past two years or so, Lea has been dashing between Canberra and Penang, in Malaysia, working on a major exploratory project under the aegis of Liz Lea Creates. Now she has contrived to present it as the opening performance in the third iteration of the BOLD dance festival, which she first staged in 2017.

This year, Lea has also brought the festival under the aegis of the Craft + Design Canberra Festival, arguing eloquently that dance itself is a form of design, as it deals with how you position your body in space.

Now it’s full steam ahead on ALTER, billed as a new double bill of dance, design and technology, exploring the interplay of body, identity in a cross-cultural exchange between Australian and Malaysian artists.

Malaysian dancers Low Yu En, Luvenia Kalia and Aida Redza will be here, performing with Australian artists Katie Senior, Mia Rashid and Jareen Wee.

Produced and directed by Lea, the work involves the active intervention of Malaysian creative technologist Low Zi Xiang and lighting designer Karen Norris, while Canberra hip-hop artist Citizen Kay has composed a new score.

Partly created to reflect Canberra’s brutalist architecture, in keeping with its connection with Craft + Design Canberra Festival, projected designs will be triggered live by the dancers to create a surround-sound experience, or what they are calling a work of fluid movement aimed at saturating the senses.

The dissenting elements of the work, Lea tells me, are all about the design of the body and movement, and pushing against physical norms.

Her collaboration with Penang immersive storytelling studio Maitree, directed by Peta Khan and recognised with an Australian Human Rights Commission Award, has been closely involved with the project, but she will not be here in Canberra.

Nor will XR (Extended Reality) developer Steve Voon, from Malaysia, although Lea reports that he’s been working closely with the dancers to make the production more meditative and immersive.

While officially she is the director, Lea points out that it is the dancers who often create the choreography.

“Not directing allows me to sit out and look at it,” she tells me. 

“It’s been a dream to work with deeply intuitive creative people to create a sonic landscape… we hope that such works could eventually find their way into galleries.”

As for the BOLD festival, that will definitely look at dissent in dance.

Lea notes that one of our leading dance lights and festival patron, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, has been known for her environmentally themed work and for staying on stage into her 90s, an act of dissent from dance norms.

ALTER, Belco Arts, November 7, two performances. Bookings at belcoarts.com.au

BOLD Dissent, schedule at a glance

• ALTER, two shows, Belconnen Arts Centre, November 7.
• The Semangat Body, workshop by Aida Redza, D Block, Gorman Arts Centre, November 8.
• Moving Freely, an inclusive sensory workshop, D Block, Gorman Arts Centre, November 8.
• BOLD Dissent, A Symposium, Day 1, Canberra Museum and Gallery, November 12.
• BOLD Dissent, A Symposium, Day 2, Canberra Museum and Gallery, November 13.
• A Stellar Lineup, free event, Civic Square, November 13.
• Interdisciplinary Arts Tea Party, A Block Theatre, Quantum Leap Australia, November 14.
• Moving & Making, D Block Studio, Gorman Arts Centre, November 14.
• Reef Rangers, Canberra Museum and Gallery, November 14.
• Dance of Dissent, closing event of the 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival, NFSA courtyard, November 14.
• Workshop with Sue Healey, D Block Studio, Gorman Arts Centre, November 15
• Smaranam, Memory Embodied, by Vaidehi Subramanyan, Quantum Leap Australia Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, November 15.
• Being BOLD, featuring Anca Frankenhauser, Patrick Harding-Irmer, Chrissie Koltai and Sue Healey, Gorman Arts Centre, November 15.

All details at theboldfestival.com.au

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