Resonance unites three generations of Australian dancers in a moving celebration of memory, connection, and reinvention.

At its heart is a conversation between past and present, as Batchelor’s meditative choreographic style engages in a curious dialogue with the legacy of Tanja Liedtke – a rising star in the Australian dance scene whose life was tragically cut short in 2007, on the eve of her ground-breaking appointment as Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company.

Featuring dancers who worked closely with Liedtke and an intergenerational cast, including local guest dancers in each city it tours to, Resonance honours the dancer’s body as a living archive. It becomes an intimate act of choreographic transmission – one that celebrates dance as a language of friendship, transformation, and enduring connection.

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"On face value, my work looks very different to Liedtke’s. Her work sat more in the genre of dance theatre; dealing with narratives and characterisation within crisply crafted movement sequences. My work is more like poetic meditation, gentle brushstrokes of movements, looping patterns, cultivating essences and energies. This meeting point proved to be a driving creative impetus in Resonance, a friction that produced surprising and exciting material. Starting from seeds of ideas planted by Tanja, or passed down memories from Amelia, Anton and Kristina, material evolved through choreographic intervention. Filtered through the aesthetic tastes and collaborative efforts of Leah, Chloe, Bek, Morgan - our instincts in transforming Tanja’s archive speak to the distance of then and now, Australia and Europe. It says as much about our similarities as our differences. Echoing Tanja might here be an invitation to look inward and ruminate on our place in this history, ultimately leaning towards who and where we are now in the present." - James Batchelor. Fates Intertwined: Transforming Liedtke's Archive. Read more

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Artistic Team 

Lead Artist, Choreographer, Producer - James Batchelor

Dramaturg, Producer - Bek Berger

Composer - Morgan Hickinbotham 

Performed and realised by: James Batchelor, Chloe Chignell, Leah Marojević

with Amelia McQueen, Anton, Kristina Chan, Alice Heyward, Charlotte Macarthur, Emma Batchelor and dancers from Sydney Dance Company PPY, Victorian College of the Arts and QL2 Dance

Lighting Designer - Katie Sfetkidis

Lighting Associate - Lara Gabor

Costume Designer - Theo Clinkard

Costume Maker - Alice Ortona Coles

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Credits

Resonance has been generously supported by the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, supported by ACT Government through artsACT, Michael Adena & Joanne Daly, Keir Foundation, Initiative LUNA PARK e.V. as part of the project „LUNAPARK.Residenzstipendien“ funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, QL2 Dance, Canberra Theatre Centre New Works, Goethe Institut and our circle of friends via the Australian Cultural Fund.

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Reviews

“Resonance is an engaging, poignant, multilayered and informative work, beautifully realised, and portraying humour, exactitude, joy. Whilst the dance itself is ephemeral, the memory and legacy of Liedtke continues." - Samara Purnell, Canberra Critics Circle 

"Resonance is an embodied testament to choreographer Tanja Liedtke: sensitive, expansive and inclusive, unfolding as a digressive meditation on legacy and the circulation of artistic influence." - Andrew Fuhrmann, The Age

"Ultimately, this may be the legacy. Namely, the pathways and channels that continue to inform 2020s practise — with Liedtke standing in as the blotting paper, soaking up and re-expressing the moving archive of dance art. Thus, the core resonance at play is likely morphic, memory crossfading into the hard physicality of tonight’s performance. In this way, Liedtke and Batchelor may be no more than vessels, and we their fellow travellers." - Paul Ransom, Dance Informa 

Photos by Morgan Hickinbotham