Celebrating 25 years of Choreolab!
Choreolab is Aotearoa’s longest running professional development workshop series for contemporary dancers, and the only one of its kind in Aotearoa.
For the past 25 years, Footnote New Zealand Dance has brought together dance practitioners from across the country and internationally to connect and develop their artistic practice.
2027 Choreolab Tutors & Workshop artists:
Georgia Rudd
Elijah Kennar
Sefa Tunupopo
Dr Riki Neihana Pirihi
Jo Randerson
Gavin Webber & Kate Harman - The Farm
Lisa Densem
Sacha Copland
Lucy Marinkovich
Workshop Schedule
Wednesday 6th January
5.00pm - 7.00pm Choreolab Opening event
Thursday 7th & Friday 8th January
9.00am - 11.00am Class with Georgia Rudd
11.30am - 1.30pm Dance X Stunts with Elijah Kennar
2.30pm - 5.00pm Cypher Searching with Sefa Tunupopo
Saturday 9th January
9.00am - 11.00am Class with Georgia Rudd
11.30am - 1.00pm Cypher Searching with Sefa Tunupopo
2.00pm - 4.00pm Rangatuone: The Weaving of Gestures with Dr Riki Neihana Pirihi (Lecture/Workshop)
4.15pm - 5.15pm Secret Art Powers with Jo Randerson (Lecture)
Monday 11th - Thursday 14th January
9.00am - 1.00pm The Farm Workshop with Gavin Webber & Kate Harman
2.00pm - 5.00pm Dancing, Improvising, Breathing, Performing with Lisa Densem
Monday 11th January 5.15pm-6.45pm Applications & Advocacy with Sacha Copland and Lucy Marinkovich (Lecture)
Thursday 14th January 6.00pm - 7.00pm An Honest Conversation with Sacha Copland & Gavin Webber (Performance)
Friday 15th January
9.00am - 1.00pm The Farm Workshop with Gavin Webber & Kate Harman
2.00pm - 4.00pm An Honest Conversation workshop with Sacha Copland
6.00pm - 9.00pm Closing Party
Tutors & Workshops
Rangatuone: The Weaving of Gestures — Collective Improvisation, Spontaneous Composition, and Conducted Performance Practice with Dr Riki Neihana Pirihi
Rangatuone: The Weaving of Gestures is a lecture and practical workshop led by Dr Riki Pirihi that explores an Indigenous-informed methodology for collective improvisation and spontaneous composition. Developed through extensive artistic research and performance practice, Rangatuone extends the principles of Butch Morris’ Conduction® system, investigating the dynamic intersection between improvisation and composition as a shared creative act.
We will examine how gestural languages function as systems of communication, organisation, and meaning-making within ensemble performance. Through discussion, analysis, and embodied practice, the workshop introduces the interpretation of gestural symbolism, the facilitation of real-time compositional decision-making, and the negotiation of individual and collective agency in improvised contexts.
Dr Riki Neihana Pirihi (Ngāti Wai, Ngaati Maahanga) lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. His work spans multiple disciplines, including composition, performance, sound art, production, and research. He has led and conducted large-scale ensemble projects, performed in a wide range of collaborative settings, and created work for both recorded and live contexts. His ongoing projects include solo and group performances, conduction ensembles, DJ sets, film composition, and sound-based installations.
Dance X Stunts with Elijah Kennar
Andi Crown Photography
An introduction to the world of stunts through a dance lens.
This playful, hands-on workshop explores how the movement skills dancers already have: body awareness, timing, control, rhythm, physicality and performance which can translate into screen stunts and physical storytelling.
We’ll play with basic stunt techniques, movement for camera, reactions, character and a little bit of controlled chaos. The goal isn’t to become a stunt performer in one workshop, but to discover another way to use your body and expand what you can bring to film, content and performance.
I’m Elijah Kennar: family man, dancer, stunt performer and lifelong mover.
As a kid, I watched Jackie Chan, Jet Li and WWF and tried to recreate everything I saw. That obsession with movement eventually became a career in dance and choreography, including years spent collaborating with artists and friends around the world.
Over the past six years, I’ve found myself in the film industry doing stunts! I’m discovering just how useful my dance background can be. I’m still very much a student of it! Learning, experimenting, collaborating “falling” forward and adding value to every project I’m on.
For me, it’s never just about what I do. It’s about the people, the stories, the family and the experiences that make the journey worthwhile.
Dancing, Improvising, Breathing, Performing with Lisa Densem
In this workshop Lisa draws on different influences that have formed her dancing and improvisational practice and brings them together along with principles from Middendorf, a somatic breath practice.
Guided movement and perception explorations invite us to receive and attend to our inner and outer worlds. What movement is already there and what is there before it becomes dance? We sense our body and all the small movements that continually accompany us. How can we be in contact and relation with these ever-changing streams of movement and how can we allow unfolding feedback loops of awareness, emotion and sensation to open movement possibilities? At the same time, how can we experience this continually evolving flow, while simultaneously positioning ourselves in relation to what is happening? What do we allow? What do we follow? How do we form while being formed? And how do we negotiate all of this with the question of being seen?
During the workshop, Lisa will also explore different tools for the shaping and scoring of group improvisations and there could be a possibility for a showing at the end of the workshop should participants be interested. The workshop is suitable for people wanting to deepen their performative improvisational practice as well as for those looking for improvisational tools to enrich their compositional practice.
Lisa Densem is a NZ performer, choreographer and teacher who lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the NZ School of Dance in 1987 and worked for many years with the choreographers Douglas Wright and Michael Parmenter. In 1999 she moved to Berlin to join the company Sasha Waltz and Guests and was part of the trilogy ‘Körper’ ‘S’ and ‘Nobody’. ‘Körper’ (Bodies) became an iconic dance work and toured the world for 20 years. Lisa continues to work with SW&G, particularly in site specific projects, and also works as a freelance performer with choreographers such as Sergiu Matis, Eva Meyer Keller and Sandra Man amongst others. Her choreographic work includes ‘Silently the Birds Fly Through Us’ (2012) and ‘We Have been There’ which was made for Footnote in 2013. In addition to her performance work, Lisa is a trained practitioner in the somatic breath practice ‘BreathExperience’ based on the work of Ilse Middendorf. Since 2019 she has been researching how this practice can open new perspectives within a dance context. Lisa is a graduate of the MA SODA programme at the UDK in Berlin.
Class with Georgia Rudd
We begin with the reality of the body, the form, the sensations, the ordinary. Working with attention as a way back home to the body, tuning into sensation and different aspects of our anatomy, bones, fluids, fascia and tissues, while opening into relationship with the space and the people around us too.
This attention to and meeting of reality, of what is already here and happening, opens us into larger possibilities. Dancing is a way to go in and through the body into imagined yet palpable realities. To expand the capacity of the body beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Coming into this now, and this now, and this now.
Class moves between somatic work, guided improvisation and functional opening, encouraging natural movement, the use of body weight and efficiency through coordination and alignment. Progressing into more complex sequences, coordinating standing and floor work, allowing us to really move through space together.
Working with sensitivity, nuanced listening and expression, warming up and connecting to the aliveness of the body, the fertile source of creating, moving and making. A nice way to connect and dance together, where we can feel joy moving through the room.
Georgia Rudd is a dancer, performer and teacher with a real interest in inhabiting the full terrain of the body to create and move from this place. Constantly asking questions, her practice is driven by an ongoing fascination with sensation, imagination and transference utilising the reality of the body, the form as a gateway into the imagined yet palpable realms, desires, fantasy, the extraordinary.
A graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance, Georgia has worked with companies and artists across Australia, Indonesia, Beijing and New Zealand. She has performed and toured internationally works by; Kyle Page and Amber Haines, Melanie Lane, Lucy Guerin, Stephanie Lake, Alisdair MacIndoe, Gideon Obarzanek, Lee Serle, Jo Lloyd, Harrison Ritchie Jones and Ross McCormack.
Dance is the medium she uses to experience the body as a site of digestion and transformation of the experience of interfacing with the world. Works include ‘sifting through all the forgets', 'Construction and Contemplation’,’ Together Indecision' with Mason Kelly and ‘Fat Dream’ with Sophie Gargan as well as ‘Memories from Suspended Places' co-created with Riyo Tulus Pernando as part of the Naarm/Solo Dance Exchange through LGI.
Deepening into this enquiry through the study of Craniosacral therapy, Georgia, brings presence and attuned approach to movement and teaching.
Cypher Searching with Sefa Tunupopo
At the heart of my practice is the cypher. A gathering point for us to see each other, ourselves, and how we can exist in community. In these workshops we will be exploring how to make work when we centre our own dance, the dance of our friends, and the relationships we already have with the people around us.
Starting with an introduction to cyphers and tools to help us identify what our own dance is, we will delve into a series of cypher based tasks influenced by CONJAH and developed alongside Shifting Centre. Through these tasks we will explore what the making process can look and feel like when we can show up as we are, meet each other halfway, and allow the work to emerge through our exchanges with one another.
Sefa Tunupopo is an award winning artist of Samoan descent based in Wainuiomata, Aotearoa. He is an independent dancer, theatre maker, and leader of Indigenous arts collective Shifting Centre. Sefa’s conviction in dance is synonymous with love, and aspires to create art with and for his intersecting communities.
Sefa works across street dance, performance, and theatre. Graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance in 2021, and with foundations in cypher culture and freestyle - he moves between theatre-making, directing, and community-led platforms. He is an active freelance artist, working with companies such as Movement of the Human, Tawata Productions, Footnote New Zealand Dance and The New Zealand Dance Company, while maintaining a strong leadership presence within the street dance community in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Sefa remains committed to deepening his craft while strengthening the conditions that allow Indigenous and street dance artists to imagine and sustain creative futures together.
The Farm Workshop with Gavin Webber
Gavin Webber and The Farm are renowned for their distinctive physical style, where movement is driven by purpose, intention and an explosive physical energy. This 3 hour workshop invites participants to explore the origins of movement, the internal states that drive action, and the ways we communicate through our bodies.
Moving beyond aesthetics and technique, the workshop asks: What motivates us to move? Where does the desire to move come from, and how do we communicate it to others? Through a dynamic blend of movement and theatre practices, including Chi Gung, contemporary dance, floor work and improvisation, participants will explore the relationship between inner impulse and physical expression.
The workshop will also investigate the art of partnering, exploring how two bodies communicate through movement. Like a conversation, effective partnering relies on listening, responsiveness and the ability to react to another person in the moment.
Through these explorations, participants will discover new ways to move with freedom, physical power and intention, while challenging habitual patterns of self-perception and judgement. By connecting more deeply with our internal states and those around us, we can expand our understanding of presence, both as performers and in everyday life.
Gavin Webber is one of four Artistic Directors of The Farm, a company based on the Gold Coast, whose work has been described as the gateway drug to contemporary dance. He started dancing late after many lost years spent hitch-hiking, skiing, writing, camping and studying. Eventually he decided to start making art instead and joined Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre (1993 to 1998) followed by Belgian company Ultima Vez (1998 to 2001). Throughout his career Gavin has worked between Australia and Europe and was Artistic Director of Dancenorth from 2005 to 2009. With The Farm he has created and performed in works such as No One Gets Out Of Here Alive, Cockfight, TIDE, Stunt Double and Ninth Wave. He won a Helpmann Award for TIDE in 2018, received a Sidney Myer Individual Award in 2017 and had a sandwich named after him at Lucia’s Coffee shop in Adelaide in the 1990’s.
The Farm is a small organisation based on the Gold Coast, away from traditional strongholds of contemporary arts. We operate as an anti-hierarchical collective, with collaborative processes in place for over 20 years, based on intergenerational respect and reciprocity. With 4 Artistic Directors acting as lead artists, we’re from different backgrounds, ages, genders, sexualities and lived experiences. We work together because we believe shared knowledge is a powerful tool in creating art that matters and shakes up existing systems.
Secret Art Powers with Jo Randerson
Jo Randerson ONZM (they/them) is an artist, activist, advocate from Aotearoa New Zealand. Jo is an Arts Foundation New Generation Laureate, and the founder/artistic director of Barbarian Productions. An award-winning playwright, performer and writer, Jo has published short fiction, poetry, plays, and a new nonfiction work Secret Art Powers. Their short film Hey Brainy Man! won the NZIFF Patron’s Choice Award (co-directed w. Loren Taylor). In 2023 they received the Topp Prize for Comedy. www.joranderson.com, www.barbarian.co.nz
An Honest Conversation Workshop with Sacha Copland
Connect to your first impulse and the honesty of your body. Java artistic Director Sacha Copland will lead you through tasks to connect your voice with your body and your body with your voice. Challenge your internal censor and explore partnering though conversation, identity and honesty. This workshop is influenced by the Māori concept of whakawhanaungatanga. Ngā mihi to all the beautiful artists who have influenced this practice.
For a list of artists who have performed honest conversations: https://www.javadance.nz/shows#honest
Sacha Copland is stubborn, political and wildly passionate about dance. She is the artistic director of Java Dance Theatre & founded the company in 2003 at the tender age of 21. As a Pākehā (Polish, Scottish, English, Irish, German, Norwegian) with parents who are obsessed with geneology/whakapapa, Sacha feels her ancestry down to the tips of her toes. Sacha grew up in the South Island and is Tangata Tiriti. Sacha’s dance cred includes the 2019-21 CNZ Choreographic Fellowship, being a distinguished graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance, TEDx speaker, ASSITEJ Next Generation alumni, 2022 Arts Wellingtonian of the Year and 44 year old dance veteran. She has choreographed prolifically for 20+ years, developing Java's distinctly immersive theatrical style in 23 full length dance works, including Back of the Bus and The Artisan Series. With Java, Sacha has performed in Edinburgh, Korea, England, Singapore, Australia China and Invercargill. Sacha is currently working on new works Politicians and Demigods and My Pet Monster.
An Honest Conversation with Sacha Copland and Gavin Webber (Performance)
An Honest Conversation is a high-risk dance duet. Two dancers talk to each other while dancing for 1 hour, attempting to be as honest as possible right in front of your eyes.
Blending the intimacy between friends, the electric energy of dance and the unpredictability of honesty, An Honest Conversation creates space for conversations you can never have.
Described as a cross between stand-up comedy and dance, An Honest Conversation brings two unique individuals into conversation with each other.
Gavin Webber
Sacha Copland
Participant Fees
All in (all workshops and events) - $450
Class with Georgia Rudd - $60
Dance X Stunts with Elijah Kennar - $50
Cypher Searching with Sefa Tunupopo - $120
Rangatuone: The Weaving of Gestures with Dr Riki Neihana Pirihi & Secret Art Powers with Jo Randerson - $30
Workshop with Gavin Webber & Kate Harman - $200
Dancing, Improvising, Breathing, Performing with Lisa Densem - $150
An Honest Conversation workshop - $30
Applications & Advocacy seminar - free
An Honest Conversation performance - free for Choreolab participants, koha for public
“Choreolab is always the highlight of my dance year, and as a freelancer is my main source of professional development. Choreolab provides the facility for me to both refine and broaden my skills and interests as an artist, and gives me fuel for my creative projects as the year goes on. ”
Applications
Participation in Choreolab 2027 is by application only - limited spaces available.
Applications to attend are now open and close Sunday 15 November 2026. Payment must be made in full by 11 December 2026 to secure your spot. Payment plans are available, please contact Anita to discuss.
Any queries please contact Anita Hunziker anita@footnote.org.nz
Choreolab 2025, photos by Tiana Kraft-Soffe