Dasha is a disabled artist of Slav/Kazakh/Chinese heritage living on Kulin Nation (Melbourne). She works across theatre, dance and experimental/contemporary performance as a maker, writer and performer. She is exploring chemistry-based photography, site-specific work, different dance styles/movement/choreography methodologies as well as incorporating visual theatre, music and new technologies as part of an expanded practice. The potential of multidisciplinary practices to create entertaining experiences which critically respond to climate change, community, class, migration, women’s bodies and human-technology relations on local, national and global levels excites her. Writing political theatre that is engaging, provocative and promotes moving conversations on sex-sexuality-desire, mental health, science and speculative futures, complex-contested histories and the intersection between race, class and identity scares her. In hopes of moving towards that direction, she is still learning the rules of traditional theatre to break them; linguistic hybrids, multi-voiced narration, liminality, place, horror, erotically-charged symbolism, absurdity and individuals/families confronting political realities and truth calls to her. Dasha attempts to centre her practice around cross-cultural physical theatre traditions, satire to cut through political anger, reimagining theatre-making through the lens of disability access and feminist aesthetics, radical curating and autobiographical/conversational tools.

Still in her first two years of practice, Dasha has performed at Union House Theatre, Theatre Works and Melbourne Fringe Festival. She trains at Western Edge Youth Arts, has completed a residency at Arts Access Victoria, Bouffon training with Emily Goddard, professional development workshop series on content and form in choreography with Shelley Lasica at Bus Projects and attended Back to Back Theatre CAMP 2020 on an emerging artist scholarship. Her movement interests begins from a core of contemporary dance with a desire to shift from its Anglo-Western centricity. She is doing Gaga training with Batsheva Dance Company, Butoh with Inkboat and Yumi Umiumare and looking to explore Indo-Contemporary, Bollywood, Hip-Hop, Urban, African traditions and fusions, voguing, aerial silk in-depth and return to her roots in Central Asia. Viewpoints, Suzuki and Bouffon training is also something she's looking to pursue further. She recently co-founded a student disability theatre company at Unimelb (Actually Diverse Theatre) with a focus on exploring disability and its intersections with race, sexuality, gender and class.

Dasha is an APHIDS Supermassive Artist, where she is developing her practice under a year-long mentorship with Lara Thoms. She is also contracted by Arts Centre Melbourne as a Young Connector where she is curating youth professional development programs and advising on the future direction with a focus on cultural diversity, working/underclass and disability access. She is a recent recipient of SOLITUDE 1 with Chunky Move in partnership with the Tanja Liedtke Foundation. In the future, she will be in Breeders (dir. Emma Hall, La Mama and online), a dark comedy written and performed by neurodivergent people and a devised choreographic-sculptural project That which was once familiar (led by Zoe Bastin). She is a reviewer for Witness Performance and is commissioned for an upcoming feature on working/underclass in the arts. Dasha is in the early stages of developing her own work.

Dasha is also looking to pursue more long-form narrative journalism for the general public; with a focus on sitting with contradictions (or things that at first seem to be), unpacking different knowledge systems (and access to them as it influences the way in which we perceive rights and how different people understand each other), languages and lived experiences as well situating individual narratives within societal patterns. She finds unique angles on the formation of nations/populism/nationalism/ethnic conflict, social/political movements, climate change and contemporary socioeconomics best explored through this medium. She seeks to understand religion, mental health, education and public health issues through viewing them as part of systems. Race informs our contemporary realities and she hopes to honour its influence through weaving history, politics and culture. Also interesting stories on new technology, biology/neuroscience/mind, food, subcultures and profiles of artists.