Unravel is a first stage development of multi-disciplinary work exploring identity and connection to place that is enabled through embodied movement and text.
This project builds upon a collaboration between dance practitioner Adrianne Semmens and writer Jennifer Eadie and the publication created together, Unravel, facilitated by The Mill’s Writer in Residence program, and commissioned by Delving into Dance in partnership with Critical Path as part of the 2019/20 Digital Interchange Festival.
The project explores what it means to acknowledge a sense of disconnection-connection to place, exploring through memories, agitations and the calling for deeper connections to ancestral country.
About the artists:
Adrianne Semmens is a dance practitioner with experience working across the arts, education and community sectors. Adrianne is a descendant of the Barkindji People of NSW and a graduate of NAISDA Dance College and Adelaide College of the Arts.
Identity and place continue to be reoccurring themes within Adrianne’s practice, investigated throughout her own choreographic explorations and community based projects to embody place and memory, and interrogate social constructs.
Choreographic highlights include Thread (2020), created for The World’s Smallest Stage, in collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and engagement in Dance Epidemic (2018), creating a site specific work on a group of international youth dancers as part Creative Gatherings for Panpapanalya, Joint Dance Congress.
Adrianne’s professional experience also includes her role as a Dance Presenter for The Australian Ballet’s Dance Education Ensemble, as a performer for Gina Rings, Jo Clancy, Jade Erlandsen, Cathy Adamek and recent performances for Dance Rites, choreographed by Kaine Sultan-Babij. Passionate about dance education and the role of dance in maintaining wellbeing, Adrianne has worked on many youth focused initiatives, including projects for Kurruru Arts and Culture Hub, Carclew, University of South Australia, Department for Education and Ausdance SA.
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Currently, an academic at UniSA and PhD candidate in the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her creative practice is primarily text and installation based: combining word, image, video, and found objects.
Her writing and art has been published in CORDITE Poetry Review, criticalpath, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Borderlands e-journal, Extempore and Frankie Magazine.
Her artwork was included in the third Mill Showcase.