https://freyawaterson.com Freya Waterson Tue, 04 Aug 2026 02:03:03 +0000 https://freyawaterson.com en https://freyawaterson.com/Home Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:39:01 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Home Independent creative producing company led by Freya Waterson. Working internationally across contemporary performing arts. .mobile.full_width .page_container:not([split-layout]) .container_width { width: 100%; min-height: auto; } body { overflow:hidden;} .mobile { overflow:auto !important;} https://freyawaterson.com/Melanie-Lane Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:39:27 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Melanie-Lane Melanie Lane Choreographer and performer, collaborating with artists across film, visual art, theatre and music to create works that tread between forms and contexts. Melanie’s Website ︎︎︎  Melanie Lane is an Australian/Javanese choreographer and performer. She works across and between performative contexts to interrogate the body beyond dominant narratives.Melanie’s independent works have been presented across Europe, Asia and Australia. She has been commissioned to create works for West Australian Ballet, Chunky Move, Sydney Dance Company, Dance North, Australasian Dance Collective, Shauspiel Leipzig, Nagelhus Schia Productions and Dance Theatre Heidelberg. Melanie has choreographed works for the English National Opera (Salome) and Burg Theater Vienna (Trojan Women). She regularly collaborates with UK electronic musician CLARK (Warp Records) and choreographed his 2015 & 2017 live shows, which were presented at 30+ international venues.Melanie was the recipient of the 2017 Bewegungskunstpreis (Germany) and the 2018 Keir Choreographic Award (AU). In 2022, she was the inaugural Established Artist in Residence at University of Canberra x Belco Arts; was Resident Director at Lucy Guerin Inc in 2015. She is currently the 2023/24 Choreographer in Residence at Chunky Move; a Resident Artist at The Substation; an Associate Artist at e.motion21 and QL2 (Canberra). Melanie is a recipient of the 2023 Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and the 2024 Australia Council Fellowship for Dance. She is the Chair of Melbourne’s Dancehouse. https://freyawaterson.com/Samara-Hersch Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:39:35 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Samara-Hersch Samara Hersch Theatre maker, director and teaching artist exploring the intersection of contemporary performance and community engagement. Website ︎︎︎ Samara Hersch is a theatre maker, director and teaching artist whose practice explores the intersection of contemporary performance and community engagement. Her current research is an exploration into public acts of intimacy, particularly through imagining new performative frames for non-professional performers and audiences to inhabit. She was Female Director in Residence of Malthouse Theatre in 2013;  artist in residence at Theatre Rotterdam 2022-2023 and part of the EU Network, ACT: Art Climate Transition. She was the 2023 recipient of the International Caroline Neuber Scholarship of the City of Leipzig. Her recent body of work focuses on critical trans-generational dialogue with an enquiry into conversation as performance. Samara regularly collaborates with artist Lara Thoms. Together they engage young people to explore the performance of alternate histories. Their work subverts notions of adults as experts, foregrounding the voices of young people in the retelling of national stories and identities.  Between 2016 and 2022, Samara's works were presented in 28 seasons across Australia, Asia and Europe. Highlights include Kyoto Experiment (Japan); West Kowloon Cultural Centre (Hong Kong); Sick Festival (UK); Theatre Practice (Singapore); Spring Festival, Noorderzon (Netherlands); Kammerspiele, Sophiensaele, Schwankhalle,(Germany); BUDA (Belgium); Zürcher Theatre Spektakel (Switzerland), and in Australia at Adelaide Festival, Darwin Festival, Liveworks, PICA, Theatreworks, Arts House, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Vitalstatistix. https://freyawaterson.com/Ngilipitji-1 Tue, 04 Aug 2026 02:03:03 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Ngilipitji-1 Ŋgilipitji A collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and independent ensemble, Hand to Earth. Hand to Earth ︎︎︎ Australian Chamber Orchestra ︎︎︎ Freya is Creative Producer of the project. Ŋgilipitji is a collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Hand to Earth, envisioned as both a standalone performance and multi-screen, spatialised audio installation. The work seeks to transport audiences to the ancestral homeland of the Wägilak people of South-East Arnhem Land, reimagining one of the world’s oldest song traditions and fostering a dialogue between public Wägilak Manikay (traditional song cycles) and contemporary orchestral and electroacoustic music. Hand to Earth is an independent quintet in which Yolŋu song keepers Daniel and David Wilfred recontextualise their 40,000 year old song tradition in a resolutely contemporary setting with three of Australia's most distinctive musicians, Sunny Kim (voice) Peter Knight (trumpet/electronics) and Aviva Endean (clarinets/electronics). They have released three albums, which have won international praise, and performed in some of the most prestigious venues in the world.The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) lives and breathes music, making waves around the world for its explosive performances that redefine orchestral music. With its fearless leader of 35 years, Artistic Director Richard Tognetti, the ACO is acclaimed internationally as an ensemble of invention and unforgettable music-making. Performing more than 100 concerts each year, the ACO regularly collaborates with artists and musicians who share its adventurous spirit. The ACO has a series of award-winning cinematic concert films, as well as an active recording program. https://freyawaterson.com/Aphids Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:39:08 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Aphids AphidsBringing artists into meaningful exchange with audiences through performance, critical dialogue and unpredictable encounters in the public realm. Aphids Website ︎︎︎ Freya works with APHIDS as a Consultant Producer. She provides strategic project, fundraising, market development and distribution expertise. APHIDS is a 30-year-old artist-led experimental art organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. Collaborative and future-focused, APHIDS is led by Co-Directors Lara Thoms and Mish Grigor. The work of APHIDS is feminist, intersectional, angry and funny; bringing artists into meaningful exchange with audiences through performance, critical dialogue and unpredictable encounters in the public realm. https://freyawaterson.com/Cracking-1 Thu, 09 Oct 2025 05:38:46 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Cracking-1 Cracking A collaboration between performance maker, Lz Dunn and composer, Aviva Endean. About Liz ︎︎︎ Aviva Endean website ︎︎︎ Freya is the Project Producer for Cracking, working with the artists to develop the work for future presentation. Cracking is a work in development, envisaged as a choreographic-sonic performance that queers the iconic "Australian" stockwhip. Initiated and performed by Lz Dunn, in collaboration with sound artist Aviva Endean, Cracking traverses autobiographical and cultural reference points to ask questions about origins, inhabited narratives and how we might undulate, shift and crack to give way to something else.The Australian stockwhip is classified as a ‘Supersonic’ whip. Its loud crack is produced by a ripple traveling at high speed to break the sound barrier – a sonic boom. It originated ‘downunder’ during colonisation as a cattle-herding tool and became an iconic motif of rural Aussie masc-male culture. As the project develops, the artists will explore the complex and troubling nature of the ‘whip’ as object and actor. Queering existing tropes and narratives, the artists will create intersections with the their own personal histories and cultural inheritances to examine a relationship between whip and voice. https://freyawaterson.com/if-the-mountain-holds-its-breath Mon, 03 Aug 2026 06:43:23 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/if-the-mountain-holds-its-breath A sound field in a forest An interactive sound field in the forest. Madeleine & Tim’s website ︎︎︎ Freya is working with the artists to develop new opportunities for this project. Madeleine and Tim have been invited to create the first iteration of this new work for Gero Art Discovery 2026, titled ‘If the mountain holds its breath’. A site specific response in the Hagiwara Forrest in Japan's Gifu Prefecture, the work will foreground listening as an ecological act - a way of crossing time, distance and landscape. A sound installation in which local sounds (wind, water, birds) blend with music composed by the artists based on local traditional children’s songs. As visitors walk along the forrest path, they are gradually enveloped by the sound, leading to a connection with the past and future of this place.A sound field in a forest reimagines kinetic red horns, interactive instruments that have featured in the artist’s previous acclaimed work ‘The Megaphone Project’. https://freyawaterson.com/Restless-Dance-Theatre Thu, 09 Oct 2025 04:16:48 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Restless-Dance-Theatre Restless Challenging perceptions and redefining what’s possible in the world of dance. Restless Dance website ︎︎︎ Freya works with Restless as a Market Development and Distribution consultant, building opportunitiest to share their works in Australia and internationally.  From its inception in 1991, Restless Dance Theatre has been a pioneer in inclusivity, primarily engaging dancers with intellectual disabilities. It became a haven where disabled and non-disabled dancers collaborate seamlessly, producing high-quality work born out of their collective responses to creative challenges. Under the artistic direction of Michelle Ryan since 2013, the company has evolved around a core performance ensemble comprising seven professional dancers.  https://freyawaterson.com/Mungangga-Garlagula-1 Mon, 11 Aug 2025 06:25:16 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Mungangga-Garlagula-1 Mungangga Garlagula A collaboration by legendary Indigenous performer, Mark Atkins and renowned Australian/Finnish composer and performer, Erkki Veltheim. Tura’s Website ︎︎︎ Mark Atkins Website ︎︎︎ Freya works with Tura as a Consultant Producer, with a focus on the distribution of Mungangga Garlagula. Mungangga Garlagula (Wajarri for ‘yarning by the fire’) is a collaboration in music, sound and story. Intimate and epic, playful and piercing, Mungangga Garlagula invites audiences to join Mark by the "campfire", and travel with him across the border between day and night, dream and reality, the reverberating past and an emerging future. For many thousands of years, music, song and story have been transmitted intimately, through close sensory connection; their origins lie in oral culture, in gathering together to be transported. Mungangga Garlagula’s recorded audio, live foley accompaniment and stunning instrumental passages inform and respond to Mark’s voice, breath and body; its artists are in responsive dialogue throughout, an their collaboration produces an entirely unique body of sound. Intimate and epic, playful and piercing, Mungangga Garlagula restores the experience of listening with the whole body. It draws us together with new attention on a deeply human journey of disorientation, reorientation and homecoming.Mungangga Garlagula is a project of Tura. Through the art of sound – in its many forms and crossovers within a universe of old and new practice – Tura explore Australian identity and push the boundaries of expression. https://freyawaterson.com/Chamber-Made Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:39:11 +0000 Freya Waterson https://freyawaterson.com/Chamber-Made Chamber Made Interrogating the intersections of music, sound and contemporary performance. Chamber Made Website ︎︎︎ Freya sits on Chamber Made’s Artistic Reference Group, and occasionally acts as a Consultant Producer.  Chamber Made makes intimate works that defy, challenge and renegotiate artform boundaries. The company is led by acclaimed performance-maker and director Tamara Saulwick, whose works are defined by a deep, abiding engagement with sound and music. Chamber Made is renowned for cultivating adventurous collaborations between composers, sound artists, directors, performance-makers and media artists, disrupting and rewriting conventions to discover new forms of expression.