ADC Youth Intensive 2027

Lineup

• More details about Courtney Scheu

  Courtney Scheu

  Courtney Scheu (she/her) is an independent dance artist whose practice spans performance, choreography, education, producing and interdisciplinary art making. Courtney is the only Certified Gaga Teacher based in Australia, Gaga: Ohad Naharin’s Movement language. Courtney was co-founder and co-artistic director of OUTBOUND | Contemporary Dance x Live Art Festival on Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi Country (Sunshine Coast) 2023. Courtney is the Director of the Youth Ensemble at Australasian Dance Collective. She has worked actively in the youth dance space in various capacities and is passionate about nurturing young people - creatives, thinkers and leaders. Courtney’s choreographic work has been presented across Australia and internationally over the past 15 years. Her choreographic work plays between waking and dreaming worlds, the real and unreal. She has been supported by the Sunshine Coast Council, Sunshine Coast Arts Foundation, Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Courtney loves dance for its capacity to create meaningful discoveries and connections.

• More details about Amy Hollingsworth

  Amy Hollingsworth

  Amy Hollingsworth is an award-winning dancer, director, choreographer and mentor and was appointed Artistic Director of Australasian Dance Collective in January 2019. Classically trained at The Australian Ballet School, Hollingsworth rose to the rank of principal dancer by the age of just 20, dancing numerous leading roles with both Royal New Zealand Ballet and Peter Schaufuss Balletten in Denmark. Drawn to contemporary work, Hollingsworth went on to carve out a critically acclaimed global dance career that included working with some of the world’s leading companies, including legendary British contemporary dance company, Rambert, Michael Clark Company, BalletBoyz, Hofesh Shechter Company and Sydney Dance Company.  Described by the UK Observer as one of “the most compelling and intelligent dancers on the world stage”, she won the United Kingdom’s prestigious Critics’ Circle Dance Award, twice - for Most Outstanding Female Artist in 2004 and Most Outstanding Female Performance in 2009. Rambert also commissioned Hollingsworth to develop two pieces for its emerging choreographers’ season: Singh Language (2001) and Suspect (2002). Hollingsworth departed Rambert in 2006 to be a founding member of Bonachela Dance Company, taking on the added role of Assistant Artistic Director in 2007. Balanced alongside her performance career work, Hollingsworth choreographed music videos, commercial events and produced and performed in several films, documentaries and live art collaborations. Highlights included Assistant Choreographer for Kylie Minogue’s Fever Tour, appearing in Finding Neverland, stunt doubling in Primal Scream’s Miss Lucifer pop promo and starring in Bare Rooms, an art house film celebrating Lucian Freud, installed at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.  Hollingsworth returned to Australia to join Sydney Dance Company in 2010 and received an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer (2010) in her final performance before being appointed the company’s Dance Director.  In 2015 she choreographed Deeper Than Ink for then Expressions Dance Company, now ADC, Til Enda for Queensland Ballet’s Pre-Professional Program and Two Bars of Isolation and Hazed for Melbourne’s Transit Dance. In 2016, Hollingsworth was appointed Queensland Ballet’s Creative Associate and Ballet Mistress, where she created Cadence, Interrupted for Dance Dialogues and NOOSA Alive! and Flux for the Bleach Festival, which was performed on a floating stage in the Currumbin Estuary on the Gold Coast. As part of QB’s Bespoke program, she choreographed Glass Heart in 2017 and From Within in 2019. Hollingsworth also assisted in the creation and production of Queensland Ballet’s 80-strong cast of professional and youth performers for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony. Since taking over the reins at ADC, she has continued to create – choreographing Arc, the large-scale outdoor work for Brisbane Festival in 2020 and Aftermath, which premiered at Brisbane Powerhouse in February 2021. A collaboration with Jack Lister and The Kite String Tangle’s, Danny Harley, Aftermath drew rave reviews and a sold-out season, with Dance Australia extolling "From its initial blistering explosion of light, sound and movement this bold, audacious work positively thrills… Part gig, part performance, Aftermath is exceptional”. Hollingsworth’s skills in coaching, mentoring and developing both dancers and choreographers has been widely praised. She is a sought-after keynote and motivational speaker, panel member, industry mentor and creative consultant.

• More details about Lonii Garnons-Williams

  Lonii Garnons-Williams

  Darwin-born Lonii Garnons-Williams trained at the Queensland Dance School of Excellence and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. In her early career as a freelance artist, Garnons-Williams worked with several celebrated companies, including Dancenorth, Leigh Warren & Dancers, State Opera of South Australia, Co3, Queensland Ballet and Australian Dance Theatre. She joined Australian Dance Theatre as an ensemble member in 2015, performing in Be Yourself, Habitus and Beginning of Nature. In 2016, she was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer for her role in Habitus, presented at the Adelaide Festival. Garnons-Williams then spent time in Toronto, Canada, joining Red Sky Performance for its 2017–2019 seasons. During this period, she performed in three mainstage productions and choreographed for a collaboration with Harbourfront Centre. She performed at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, and toured extensively across Europe, presenting 26 shows throughout the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Poland. She also worked with Human Body Expression and ProArteDanza in several productions. Returning to Australia in 2020, she debuted with Australasian Dance Collective (ADC) in Arc at Brisbane Festival. She also appeared in ADC’s two dance films: Cass Mortimer Eipper’s Liminal and Jack Lister’s Still Life. In 2021, she performed in Aftermath, a collaboration between Amy Hollingsworth, Jack Lister and The Kite String Tangle’s Danny Harley. That same year, she performed in Succession—a joint production with the company’s Youth Ensemble—and choreographed one of the works, A Study of You and I. In May 2021, she performed at QPAC in THREE, ADC’s triple bill featuring works by Jack Lister, Melanie Lane and Hofesh Shechter, and returned in September for Alisdair Macindoe’s Forgery at Brisbane Festival. In 2022, Garnons-Williams toured nationally with the original THREE and performed in its second iteration at Brisbane Powerhouse, featuring works by Cass Mortimer Eipper, Kate Harman and Gabrielle Nankivell. She was also featured in Warped Observance, a film by Kiosk Film highlighting Bethany Cordwell’s designs, choreographed by Jack Lister. Since welcoming her daughter in 2023, Garnons-Williams has stepped into a mentoring role, teaching and adjudicating for multiple Queensland full-time courses and national awards. She has completed a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and continues to lead contemporary and tumbling classes for pre-professional program students and ADC Company Artists. She is looking forward to performing with The Farm in their upcoming 2026 production, Death Piece, and has taken on the role of Rehearsal Director at Australasian Dance Collective.