Pre-Professional Contemporary

Welcome from the Artistic Director

Contemporary dance is constantly evolving, shaped by the artists who question it, challenge it and find new ways of making it their own.

Tonight’s program offers a snapshot of that process across our Pre-Professional Contemporary course.

Our second-year artists present self-devised solos alongside a new ensemble work by Kaitlin Malone, while our third-year cohort share original duet works that explore collaboration, authorship and the breadth of their developing contemporary practice. They also return to IRON, created earlier this year as part of our Regional Creative Project.

Our first-year students step into a new work by Transit alumna Honey Stoovee, continuing an important exchange between the artists currently training at Transit and those who have moved beyond it.

What I value most about an evening like this is that the work does not need to represent a finished artistic identity. These artists are still discovering what interests them, what challenges them and what kind of artists they may become.

Tonight, we get to witness that discovery in motion.

Thank you for being here and for supporting the next generation of contemporary artists.

Act One:

  1. Imie Britten - mutant

    Shifting identity. Natural behaviour is suppressed and altered, creating a sense of uncertainty and a fragmented sense of self.

  2. Scarlett Prescott Mason - Threads of Displacement

    Exploring migration as something lived through the body, shaped by conflict, climate, and the constant need to adapt. Costumes move between soft and rough textures causing shifts in feelings held and falling apart, while inviting care, movement, and an evolving relationship between body and material.

  3. Amelia Alderson - cwtch

    Delves into the idea that a warm embrace can bring someone a deep sense of cherish, shelter and complete safety from reality. The feeling of being held by someone who feels like home.

  4. Izzy Cuxon - 37.48.51.S

    Everything appears ordinary on the surface, yet beneath it, something lingers. Something unseen begins to emerge, creating a feeling of unease that has your skin crawling and the sense that something isn’t quite right.

  5. First Year Contemporary (Group Work) Choreographed by: Honey Stoové

    Title: Consider the Waltz Your First Warning

    Work description: There are dancers, who are human, performing choreography in a contemporary dance show. The dancers, who are definitely human, have very attractive knees but do not have ham sandwiches. The dancers, with their human fingers and human toes, are a little bit itchy. Maybe a mosquito found them particularly delicious or maybe it’s just sensitive skin but they rock-on regardless because they have choreography to do for you and the humans must dance. dance. dance with each other, dance by themselves, dance for you, in a convincingly terrestrial way.

    Music credits: Jun Miyake

    Additional credits: Dramaturgical support from Freya Humphery

  6. Eden Soutar Cussen - Harke

    A painful memory held with unexpected fondness, while being drawn toward all the future holds. Two opposing lights learning to coexist, the comfort of what was and the uncertainty of what’s to come.

  7. Fernanda Caro -

  8. Evie Kerr - Phosphorescence

    A process of photoluminescence where a substance absorbs light energy and slowly releases it as a sustained afterglow in the dark.

  9. Iskha Meave and Maddie King -

INTERMISSION

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INTERMISSION 〰️

Act Two:

  1. Second Year Contemporary (Group Work) Choreographed by Kaitlin Malone

    Title: Residual 

    Work Description: The fragments, traces and sensations that linger long after the moment itself has passed.

    Music Credits: Christophe Zurfluh, Christiaan Virant

    Any Additional Credits: This work was developed in collaboration with the second-year contemporary dancers.

  2. Third Year Contemporary (Group Work) Choreographed by Jayden Hicks

    Title: IRON

    Description: IRON explores the shifting dynamics of power within the choreographic process.

    Dancers move fluidly between positions of authority and vulnerability, navigating when to command and when to surrender. As the work unfolds, it questions the cost of artistic exposure  and whether baring ourselves in pursuit of expression is ever truly met with the validation we seek.

    Music: Zoe Keating, Inon Zur, Jacob Gade, Sakari Oramo, Nike Huchisson, Meredi