Diverse Expressions

Exploring the voices and rights of Restless Dance Theatre’s artists with disability

Private View is a new dance theatre work from restless Dance Theatre that explores the secret desires and taboo subjects of love and sex through diverse personal experiences. Leading up to its world premiere in the 2024 Adelaide Festival, artists from Restless will give an insight into their inspirations, individual perspectives and creative processes. The panel includes Artistic Director Michelle Ryan, Creative Producer Roz Hervey, dancer Michael Hodyl and dancer Darcy Carpenter in conversation with Adelaide Festival Artistic Director, Ruth Mackenzie CBE.

Audiences at this talk will be given fresh insight into the artistic vision of Restless Dance Theatre’s artists through this conversation and a video showcase of the company’s work.

Something Yucky: A Rant 

“I am a multidisciplinary artist and I reclaim the word ‘rant’ to its rightful place. Rants, especially those by femmes, are steeped in negative connotations of unjust complaining, which are too often dismissed. I will not be dismissed. The utter rage of someone who is not meant to have a voice and is made to feel small and so wordless over and over and over again. I tell it like it is, in a powerful performance. So sit and listen.” 

- Sam Petersen

A conversation between Yucky lead artist Sam Petersen and co-facilitator Grace Marlow

Opening on 17 Feb at ACE as part of the 2024 Adelaide Festival, Yucky is a group exhibition that explores the personal and political complexities that exist as part of disabled experience. 

Join Yucky’s lead artist, Sam Petersen, for a conversation about yuckiness with Grace Marlow, co-facilitator of the exhibition.

Yucky
What is yucky?
All of my life I have felt deeply yucky, in every way.
Of course I'm what they used to call germaphobic, but I hope now they
just call being real.

-excerpt from “What is yucky?” by Sam Petersen

Dancer, Restless Dance Theatre

Darcy Carpenter has performed with Restless Dance Theatre in the Memory Keeper as part of the From The Ground Up Project, and the Watermark Project as part of the Australian Youth Dance Festival.

Darcy has performed with Restless Dance Theatre since 2014, debuting with the Youth Ensemble in the 2014 performance, In The Balance. Darcy performed in In The Balance for the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival; Intimate Space directed by Michelle Ryan at the Hilton Adelaide as part of the 2017 Adelaide Festival, the Hilton Surfers Paradise as part of Bleach* Festival 2018 within the arts and culture program of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2019 Seoul Street Arts Festival. Darcy also performed in the opening segment of the 2018 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony. Darcy performed in Creating the Spectacle for the 2018 Adelaide Film Festival, Guttered for the 2021 Adelaide Festival and the 2022 Brisbane Festival, and Ecoute Pour Voir/Listen To See at the Adelaide Festival Centre for DreamBIG Festival. She performed in A Date With Restless which toured regionally, Ecoute Pour Voir as part of WOMADelaide and the premiere season of Exposed by Michelle Ryan and toured to Melbourne’s Frame Festival. Darcy performed in the premiere season of Shifting Perspectives for the 2023 Illuminate Festival Adelaide.

Creative Producer, Restless Dance Theatre

In her 37 years as a professional dancer and maker, Roz performed for numerous dance, dance theatre and theatre companies including; One Extra Company, Sydney Front, Dance North, Theatre of Image, Sue Healey, Meryl Tankard Co, DV8 and Force Majeure. With these companies she toured extensively throughout Australia, Europe and South East Asia. She choreographed for numerous theatre companies including Brink Theatre Co, Slingsby and Patch Theatre Co.

From 2001 - 2012 Roz was Associate Artist with Sydney’s Dance Theatre Company, Force Majeure. under the directorship of Kate Champion. In 2002 she won the Ausdance ‘Outstanding performance by a female dancer’ award for her performance in Force Majeure's Same same but Different. She co-directed the award-winning Me and My Shadow for Patch Theatre Company.

From 2000 - 2016 Roz was a Coordinator and Director/Producer for numerous festivals and events, including Adelaide Festival, Come Out, SA day, Bundaleer Sunday Walks. Roz was Director of the Adelaide Fringe Parade from 2013 – 2016. In 2011 she was the Performance Program Director for Cirkidz, SA Circus Centre.

Dancer, Restless Dance Theatre

Michael Hodyl has performed in Restless Dance Theatre productions since 2014 and professionally since 2018. He has created with directors Michelle Ryan, Meryl Tankard, Antony Hamilton and Sophie Hyde for stage and screen. Michael’s portfolio includes remarkable works such as In the Balance, Touched, Intimate Space, Guttered, Exposed, Shifting Perspectives, Zizanie, Ecoute Pour Voir and Rewards for the Tribe. These performances have taken Michael on national and international tours with Restless.

In 2022, Michael performed in Guttered at the Brisbane Festival and Exposed at Sydney Festival. He performed a solo for Australia Dance Theatre’s World’s Smallest Stage, Ricky and Me, featured as part of the ABC’s Art is Everywhere documentary and was part of the Human Services SA’s “See Me For Me” campaign. 

In 2023, Michael embarked on a regional tour of Exposed to Mt Gambier and Renmark, as well as performances at iconic venues like the Sydney Opera House, Theatre Royal Hobart, and Seoul, South Korea. He also participated in Counterpoise at SIDance Seoul and the world premiere of the Rewards for the Tribe documentary at the Adelaide Film Festival.

Co-facilitator of Yucky & Public Programs Coordinator at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE)

Grace Marlow has a keen interest in live arts programming, community engagement, and access, and loves when art, food, music and community collide. They remain passionate and invested in localised DIY art scenes, intermittently organising performance, poetry and film events at venues such as REWIND Studios and Ancient World. 

Grace is a member of the Deaf Gain collective. The collective, based on Kaurna Country Adelaide, advocates for the celebration and inclusion of local and national Deaf artists and greater access to arts and culture for the Deaf community.

Grace was a co-director of artist-run initiative Sister Gallery (2017–2019), Education and Schools Officer at SALA Festival (2019), and an Associate Producer of Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, Performance Space (NSW) (2023).  

Grace is currently the Public Programs Coordinator at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) and is a co-facilitator of Yucky.

Multidisciplinary artist + lead artist of Yucky

Sam Petersen is a queer visual artist, writer and performer. Sam is an AAC and power wheelchair user, living and working by the Birrarung, on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation.

"I’m interested in what can be done with one’s identity and the space around it. Both my body and mind, touching everyday feelings between the rational, the playful and the political. Of course, this is often to do with my disability and my sexuality. My work has been focused on access, and the lack of it — to places, people’s minds and opportunities."

Sam completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2016. Sam has exhibited and performed widely including Liquid Architecture, Melbourne (2019); TCB, Melbourne (2017); West Space, Melbourne (2017, 2018, 2020); Bus Projects, Melbourne (2017, 2021); and Incinerator Gallery, Melbourne (2018). Sam presented a major solo exhibition My pee is political with Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney (2020); and exhibited in Overlapping Magisteria, The 2020 Macfarlane Commissions, ACCA, Melbourne, curated by Max Delany and Miriam Kelly.

Artistic Director, Restless Dance Theatre

Michelle Ryan has enjoyed a career that has spanned over 30 years in the arts. Michelle joined Meryl Tankard in Canberra and Adelaide as part of Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre for Seven and half years, followed by projects in Europe as Tankard’s assistant. Michelle was also a founding member of Splintergroup and worked at Dancenorth for five years in various capacities.

Michelle returned to performing in 2011 as a guest artist for Alain Plattel Out of Context for Pina by Les Ballet C de la B followed by Take Up Thy Bed and Walk by Gaelle Mellis in 2012. She performed in London at the Unlimited Festival, at the Melbourne Malthouse Theatre and the Adelaide Festival Centre in Torque Show’s Intimacy. The production won the 2015 Australian Dance Award for Independent Dance and Michelle was awarded the Adelaide Critics Circle Award for her performance. Michelle also worked with Meryl Tankard and Hedone Productions on the multi award winning film, Michelle’s Story directed by Meryl Tankard which premiered at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival and won the People’s Choice Award for Best Short Film and the 2016 Australian Dance Award for Best Film. The film was screened on ABC TV in March 2016.

Michelle was appointed Artistic Director of Restless Dance Theatre in 2013 and has created numerous works for the company including Intimate Space, Seeing Through Darkness and Guttered. The major works for the company have been presented in festivals both nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Michelle celebrates diversity in all elements of her work.

In 2015 Michelle was inducted into the South Australian Woman’s Honour Roll. Michelle was the recipient of the 2020 Australia Council for the Arts Dance Award.