Originally from Dorrigo and Bathurst NSW, Alison is an award-winning dance and physical theatre artist, and choreographer based in Canberra. She graduated from WAAPA with a first-class honours degree, BA – Dance, in 2009. Her 12 year professional career to date spans across youth dance practice, teaching and dance education, solo dance and theatre work, film, arts advocacy, producing and artistic directing. Through her work she communicates contemporary issues using a choreographic language, often collaborating with non-artists and harnessing the stories embedded in ordinary and extraordinary environments. As Founder and Director of Australian Dance Party (2016) she crafts dance experiences that live in and draw from place to evoke deeper sensorial responses to affect connection and change in our community.

Olivia grew up and trained in Canberra before venturing off to study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and Taipei National University of the Arts. Olivia has been dancing with Australian Dance Party since it’s conception in 2016 and has performed in over 20 works. She most recently won a Canberra Critic Circle Award for her solo with cellist Alex Voorhoeve in ‘Symbiosis’. Alongside performing Olivia teaches and choreographs at QL2 Dance, Lisa Clark Dance Centre and Radford Dance Academy. She also works as Party Whip for Australian Dance Party and Social Media Marketing Coordinator at QL2 Dance.

Ryan graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2017. He was a member of LINK Dance company in 2018, performing works from Richard Cilli, Tobiah Booth-Remmers, Ori Flomin and Michael Whaites across Australia and Europe. He joined Australian Dance Party in 2019 and has performed Soul Defenders, Wasted, Come to the Party, Escape to Plastika and the award winning From the Vault. He performed in ADP’s recent tour of Mine in Brisbane for Supercell. Ryan collaborated with Alana Stenning, premiering their work, Mulch at Festival of the Forest. He was also a collaborator in House of Sand’s first development of That Was Friday in 2020.

Levente is from Hungary, where he studied gymnastics at an early age and later on classical ballet at the Hungarian Dance Academy. He worked in multiple national theatres in his birth country before moving on to contemporary dance, where he has explored the possibilities in Europe as free lance dancer. In early 2019 he moved to Australia where he continued dancing and teaching. Settling down in Canberra he was lucky to meet ADP and the gorgeous artists with whom he had the chance to work with in Symbiosis.

Patricia began properly training in contemporary at 15. At QL2, Patricia was able to expand her knowledge and understanding of dance, herself, and the world that she lives in. Graduating Year 12 in 2018, she went on to complete her Advanced Diploma in Elite Performance at Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year in 2020. Since returning to Canberra, she began an internship with QL2 and Australian Dance Party to further develop her artistry and practice. She has since been promoted to Party Artist and continues to develop herself in dance and in visual arts.

Ashlee is a mover, maker, performer and educator with a Bachelor of Dance from the VCA and a Diploma of Comprehensive Pilates Instruction from Polestar Pilates. An alumna of QL2 Dance, Ashlee has performed and presented work across Australia and New Zealand, worked with Australian Dance Party, Liquid Skin and Mirramu Dance companies, and received support from Australia Council for the Arts, Dancehouse, The Yarra Ranges Council, Creative Partnerships Australia, ArtsACT, QL2 Dance and AusdanceACT. Ashlee celebrates collaboration and the communicative potential of human movement to transform space and speak to diverse audiences. Her artistic interests include improvisation and site-specific performance and her work often experiments with playful, non-traditional modalities to immerse her audience into concepts of place, communication and memory. She is currently a resident artist at QL2 where she is researching methodologies for nourishing creative practice.

A circus and visual artist, Jake Silvestro focuses his artistic output on narrative, collaboration of forms and acrobatic research. Jake has worked with the internationally successful Circus OZ, CIRCA, Casus, Company 2, Dislocate, The Flying Fruit Flies Circus, GOP, and Lingua Franca. He is know for his signature style of explosive and expressive acrobatics inspired by dance, martial arts and circus. Jake was the founder and director of Poncho Circus which produced and toured physical theatre productions around Australia between 2012 – 2017. Using narrative, emotion, and movement of the body, he is defining a dialogue between each form in his first solo work ‘December’. Jake’s unique personal experience and unusual combination of skills adds to the collective conversation between visual arts and physical theatre in this new work. Jake’s latest work ‘December’ will premiere at the Canberra Theatre in April 2022.

Eliza is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, actor and graduate of The New Zealand School of Dance (NZSD). She is the co-artistic director of House of Sand. Eliza has created work on NZSD, QL2 Dance and Footnote Dance Company – the second time in collaboration with James O’hara. She has performed with Body Cartography, Australian Dance Party, The World of Wearable Art, Battleground Productions and Java Dance Theatre. Eliza is a certified Countertechnique teacher and was a key artist for the QL2 Make a Move program. Eliza was an international artist at Transformation Dance Festival Montreal in 2017 and her film M.G.W.H premiered at the F.O.R.M Festival in Vancouver 2016. In 2019 she danced for 24 hours straight in the durational epic ‘All (H)ours’. Eliza believes deeply that everyone can and should dance.

Having strayed from a traditional musical education which offered Alex the opportunity through work with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra to embrace and enjoy some of the most sublime music the human experience has created, the politically and socially amplified turmoil of today’s existential dilemmas lured him into exploring alternative forms of expression using the versatility of his electric cello and the adoption of visualisation techniques as explored in Discovery-Familiarisation-Recognition. The past few years has seen an evolving participation in fringe cabaret and contemporary arts productions and performances with the Australian Dance Party, Ample Sample including a wildly psychedelic Kids Opera co-written by Tim Bevatt and a cadre of creatively uninhibited 12 year olds.

Since releasing his debut jazz album to critical acclaim and a four star review in The Australian, Liam has continued to establish himself as one of Australia’s leading vocalists and song-writers. In 2014 Liam relocated to New York City to begin working on new musical ventures and projects. During this year Liam recorded and played with New York City’s finest musicians including Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Kris Bowers & Brad Williams. Liam also studied under Grammy-Winning Jazz Vocalist Kurt Elling. Most recently Liam launched his jazz project “Creswick” and released a self-titled Debut EP in 2018. This EP featured guitarist Nir Felder (John Mayer, Chaka Khan) and saxophonist Troy Roberts (Van Morrison, Jeff Tain Watts). Written about the Syrian refugee crisis, this work combined a modern jazz approach with lyrical story-telling. Liam has performed on many of New York’s finest and storied stages, including Blue Note Jazz Club, Jazz at the Lincoln Center, The Bitter End and Rockwood Music Hall. Liam has won several awards and recognitions including the Australia Arts Council’s ArtStart Scholarship, James Morrison Generations in Jazz Award and two ARTSACT scholarships.

Andy’s ‘Doppel’ project is a blend of sounds, art & dancing; intricate and psychedelic with a focus on deep, earthy grooves, hypnotic rhythms, luscious soundscapes and twisting melodies. Touring festivals, clubs and the spaces in between around Australia & abroad, his productions are influenced in equal parts by the unique textures of life in Australia, the surging sunset to sunrise sounds of global electronic music as well as everything in between jazz, metal and hip hop to the blues.

Melinda Smith is a poet, editor, teacher, arts advocate and event curator, living and writing in the ACT, on Ngunnawal Country. She is the author of eight poetry books, a former poetry editor of The Canberra Times, and a previous winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry. Melinda has enjoyed a long collaborative relationship with the ADP, first joining their ongoing CO.LAB practice in 2017. She provided improvised spoken word accompaniment for CO.LAB performances ‘Which Weigh’ (Canberra Obscura: Metropolis, July 2017) and ‘Incellour’ (Haig Park Bubble, October 2019), and has co-developed a scripted dance + spoken work with Ryan Stone for the ADP’s ‘Symbiosis’ (2020-2021).