shared Ground
A Contemporary Dance Creation Residency
Project overview
Shared Ground is an intensive six-day contemporary dance creation residency that brings together five professional dancers and twenty emerging students in a highly focused, collaborative creative environment.
Inspired by and evolving from Testing Ground, our original youth company, Shared Ground shifts the emphasis from testing potential to sharing experience. It is a meeting place where professional artists and emerging dancers work alongside one another as equals in the creative process, acknowledging that meaningful artistic exchange flows in every direction.
While the residency is led by Artistic Director Kesh Ollivierre, the creative methodology prioritises collaboration, curiosity, and collective authorship. Rather than a traditional rehearsal model, participants are invited to contribute movement ideas, personal perspectives, creative challenges, and artistic questions that become part of the work's development.
At its core, Shared Ground explores what happens when experience meets emerging practice.
Professional dancers bring years of performance, creative process, and technical refinement. Student dancers contribute fresh perspectives, fearless experimentation, and an openness that often challenges established ways of thinking. Together they create a shared artistic language that neither group could develop independently.
This residency is founded on the belief that mentorship is reciprocal. Every participant is both teacher and learner, artist and collaborator.
Vision
The Residency
Over six consecutive days, participants immerse themselves in an intensive creative process designed to encourage deep artistic focus and meaningful connection.
The residency will include:
• Daily contemporary technique and movement research.
• Collaborative choreographic investigations.
• Improvisation and composition tasksGroup discussions and reflective practice.
• Creative mentorship between professionals and students.
• Development of an original contemporary dance work.
The concentrated nature of the residency allows trust, risk-taking, and creative momentum to develop quickly, fostering a professional rehearsal environment that mirrors contemporary industry practice.
Outcomes
By the conclusion of the six-day residency, participants will have:
• Created and performed an original contemporary dance work at The Quarry Amphitheatre.
• Experienced a professional creative process.
• Developed collaborative and choreographic skills.
• Built mentoring relationships across generations of artists.
• Expanded their understanding of contemporary dance-making.
Why Shared Ground?
Contemporary dance thrives through collaboration. Shared Ground creates a rare environment where hierarchy gives way to conversation, where emerging artists gain genuine professional experience, and where established artists remain open to learning through fresh perspectives.
It is a space for experimentation, generosity, and artistic courage.
It is a place where everyone stands on shared ground.
Different journeys. One shared ground
To apply, please complete the form below and submit a short video response (45 seconds–1.5 minutes) to the following task by November 1st
Your response can be either choreographed or improvised. Please upload your video to Google Drive or Dropbox and provide a publicly accessible link with your application.
Your task:
Imagine that your movement has been shaped by something outside of yourself, a person, place, memory, expectation or environment.
Explore what happens when you accept, resist or break away from that influence. This can be set to any music of your choosing, and is completely open to your interpretation.