Gabriela Green Olea with Shana O’Brien

Performance Makers In Residence

Nov 9 – 13

 

Living Body Memory

Within this residency I am interested in exploring the concept of body memory and the idea of body as an archive. This will be explored in a collaborative project with First Nation Dance artist Shana O’Brien and the relationship to my own experiences of being a daughter of a refugee family, who grew up in colonised Australia. I’m interested in experiencing and researching how our diverse living body memories shape who we are literally, giving us a body to dance, to create and to connect with. This time has been challenging for us all – changing who we are literally and I am interested in how by accessing a body history we are able to move forward with a less traumatised and collectively connected body, to ourselves, our history, each other and the world.

The project is interested in exploring the intersectionality of our personal body experiences to ask the questions – what can we as diverse individuals, collectively offer a global body changing together within this crisis? What knowledge is rooted deep inside us as an embodied memory that can give inspiration to our work and connect us in this isolating time?

 

Gabriela Green Olea

Gabriela is an activist and dance artist who works across many mediums, with all people and within inclusive environments. As a daughter and granddaughter of a refugee family, her work responds to the ideas of cross-cultural identity and the transitional space of belonging to community and place. Gabriela graduated from the VCA in 2014. Gabriela choreographed a social project CPAL for the This is Not Art Festival in 2018. In 2019 she choreographed WHO WE ARE with dancers in regional NSW, living with and without disability mentored by Vicky Malin (UK). In 2020, Gabriela performed at the Sydney Festival in ENCOUNTER by Emma Saunders for FORM Dance Projects. In 2020 Gabriela had a residency at Campbelltown Arts Centre for the AusDance NSW DAIR program, and is a part of Dancehouse Emerging Choreographers Program. Most recently Gabriela is working with Emma Saunders in FORM Dance Projects Curated Program and the We are Here Company. Gabriela was a successful DirtyFeet Choreographic Lab recipient in 2019 and is a lead artist in The Right Foot program 2020. In 2020 Gabriela danced and created with Ngioka Bunda-Heath, Ros Crisp, Oscar Poncell, Holly Craig, Imogen Yang, Riana Head-Toussaint, Feras Shaheen and Coti Cibils.