Asked if he’d like choreographing to become the centrepiece his career, Craig replies, “I’m very passionate about creating work and exploring new ideas and new movement styles and also working with different collaborators. But right now I’m really enjoying a balance of dancing for people, creating my own work and teaching tertiary and pre-professional level dancers. I’ve found quite a nice little balance that’s sustaining me at the moment—which is pretty fortunate.”

For his Propel residency he’ll collaborate with “trans-disciplinary” artist Dale Collier whom he met when in PROPELLED at Newcastle’s Lock-Up gallery. “Cadi McCarthy suggested maybe the two of us could do a residency, with me as choreographer and Dale as lighting designer to see what we could come up with. We’ve never worked together. I think we’ll come in with a few basic ideas. It’s about getting into the space, having the conversation and starting to discover what kind of potential topics we might be interested in exploring and developing; whether it’s going to be abstract or have some kind of narrative or whether we’re going to just play with technology and movement.

Craig’s attitude to light, he says, “is really a matter of what the work is about. But I’m very passionate about theatrical elements to enhance the work I create. I really love working with designers and technicians, exploring what will complement the material we’re working on. Also, Dale has some new technology he’d like to explore and I’m excited to see what that may do as well.”

Asked to describe his choreography, given the huge range of his dance experiences from Douglas Wright to Garry Stewart’s ADT, Craig says, “As time has progressed, as a choreographer and collaborator, I really enjoy what each individual brings to the table, what their skills are. I think one of my great strengths as a choreographer is partnering and Contact work. I’m also very interested in seamless movement interrupted by dynamic shifts and variations. For me it’s really about playing with physicality all the time, always exploring different pathways, new ways, but always going back to what you know and then exploring inside of that.”

RealTime Arts – Magazine – issue 135 – Growing choreography in Newcastle

Catapult Dance, Propel Professional Residencies: Omer and SharonBackley-Astrachan, 21-27 Nov; TOHU and Valley, 7pm 26 Nov;

Craig Bary, Jan 2017; Catapult Dance Studios, Newcastle

BIOGRAPHIES:

CRAIG BARY
Craig has had in extensive career working in New Zealand and Australia as a dancer, choreographer and a trainer of pre-professional and professional artists. He has worked with many companies and choreographers over his 20+ year professional life. He has been a founding member of key organisations such as Catapult Dance Company, The New Zealand Dance Company and Gary Stewarts Australian Dance Theatre. Craig has worked with many different companies and choreographers, some of which include, ADT, Tasdance, KAGE, Leigh Warren and Dancers, Chunky Move, The Farm, Bangarra, Douglas Wright Dance, Footnote New Zealand Dance, Michael Parmenter’s Commotion Company, Raewyn Hill, Sue Healey, Shaun Parker Company, Legs on the Wall, Tanja Liedtke, Lisa Wilson Projects, and Sarah Foster-Sproull.

Craig’s choreography include independent works and works on Sydney Dance Company, Footnote New Zealand Dance, and the iOU collective. He has also made works for key training institutions such as the New Zealand School of Dance, Unitec, UNSW, Link Dance Company, NAISDA, and the SDC Pre-Professional Year.
Craig has had an ongoing relationship with Catapult Dance performing in the inaugural work by Cadi McCarthy ‘That Place in Between’ and in the Propel Residencies. He recently collaborated with multi-disciplinary artist Dale Collier to present their work “Shapes of Restraint” exploring collective identity.
Craig is interested in creating work that comments on current social issues. His latest independent works ‘Straight Laced’ and ‘In Difference’ were a look into the lives of the LGBTQI+ community

Craig is currently the Training Delivery Coordinator at NAISDA Dance College on the Central Coast of New South Wales

DALE COLLIER
Dale Collier is an experimental artist and writer of Wiradjuri and Northern European heritage. His practice embraces the fusion of hyper-objects and global conditioning in order to challenge live sites of key cultural, geo-political and environmental concern. Dale’s work re-examines the 21st Century roles of artist, activist and ally while utilising intertextuality to challenge and interrogate postcolonial frameworks, contemporary falsehoods and nationalistic propaganda. His work has been exhibited within the Art Gallery Of South Australia’s Ramsay Art Prize, 2019, and the Parliament Of New South Wales’ King & Wood Malleson Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, 2018.

In 2019, Dale was awarded the Windmill Trust Scholarship facilitated by the National Association for the Visual Arts, for the commencement of a reciprocal project with the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery. In 2019 he also undertook artist residencies within the Bundanon Trust First Peoples Residency Program and the Arteles Centre for Creativity’s Enter Text program in Haukijärvi, Finland.

Dale is currently a visiting artist in residence with the City of Melbourne at the Boyd Studios Community Centre, where he is developing a project involving digital/data asset management systems as key tools for activism and social change in contemporary art. He has also recently published new creative works with the Runway Experimental Art Journal in Sydney and The Lock Up Contemporary Art Space in Newcastle.

For 2020-21 Dale will be developing new projects on Country with Cementa Contemporary Art Festival in Kandos, Mid-west NSW, as well as exhibiting with SEVENTH Gallery and West Space Centre for Contemporary Art in Collingwood, Melbourne.

Dale lives and works upon the Sovereign Lands of the Awabakal, Worimi and Wiradjuri Nations, where he pays deep respects and acknowledges the custodianship of Ancestors, Elders, Community and Kin past, present and future.