Fiona Rachel Bryant

Cert IV TAE| Dip Dance | Dip Yoga & Alex Tech | BDance | MChoreog | M AUSTAT

6 Kent Ct Buderim AUSTRALIA 4556 DOB: 16.08.84 P: +61 413064313 E: fionarachelbryant@gmail.com W: fionabryant.com.au

“Bryant is such an exciting choreographer it’s difficult to do her work justice in words. The Sunday Age, Melbourne

Fiona is a Sunshine Coast based choreographer, performer and movement educator. She has created and performed dance works for curated and independent seasons at the National Gallery of Victoria (2014), Melbourne Fringe Festival (2008, 2012), Next Wave Festival (2010, 2012), Lucy Guerin Inc. (2009), Melbourne International Design Festival (2008), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2007), L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (2007), and Dancehouse (2006-2012). She has studied with Australian and internationally renowned teachers and artists, including Deborah Hay (USA) from whom she commissioned and performed two solos (2008, 2010). Other recent experiences include performing Maria Hassabi’s (USA) Intermission at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2014) and the premier of Judith Walton’s Lehte at Heide Museum of Modern Art (2014, 2015).

Fiona’s practice is chiefly concerned with discovering and re-discovering ways in which to engage the whole psychophysical self in the processes of generating and performing dance. She considers the multidimensionality of the human organism offers an extraordinary landscape to be traversed in the realm of live performance. In recent years her works have covered a diversity of themes including ageing, folk-pop culture, natural disaster, loneliness and the ordinary.

Fiona regularly develops and presents her works in non-traditional performance spaces as was evidenced in On Rondo (a solo commissioned for the National Gallery of Victorian’s 2014 Melbourne Now program) and her full-length outdoor performance – Hiatus (2012 Next Wave Festival, Green Room Award Nomination).

In recent years Fiona’s performance works and ongoing research have been recognized and supported by awards and scholarships including a Melbourne Research Scholarship (2007-2009), Fringe Festival Best Dance Award (2008), Next Wave Kickstart (2009), City of Melbourne Young Artist Award (2010), Australia Council Art Start (2010), Chunky Move Maximized ((2012), Besen Family Foundation grant (2012), Australian Postgraduate Award (2014-17) and Haihatus Arts Centre Residency Scholarship Finland (2015).

Currently Fiona is using her history and training, including as a qualified Alexander Technique and Tai Chi instructor, in order to work with two groups of dancers with disabilities who are based in the Black Box Theatre (Nambour, QLD). These groups perform full length works and regularly tour. In her solo practice Fiona has just recently finished performing in Rhiannon Newton’s Doing Dancing at the Powerhouse, Brisbane, Second Hand Opera at the University of Sunshine Coast Art Gallery and Skinny Love at the Horizon Festival Dinner En Noir. Her situational living sculpture work Pääskyt was given special mention in the 2018 Sculpture on the Edge Festival in Maleny.