Led by Weave Movement Theatre’s Janice Florence, this 6-week workshop series is designed for dance artists interested in developing work in an inclusive and accessible way. In collaboration with 8 Disabled artists from YourDNA, you will explore improvisation, drama and movement practices and techniques developed through years of experience and innovation in inclusive dance theatre—with a view to creating work. At the culmination of the 6-weeks, participants will present a work-in-progress performative showing.

Wednesdays, 11am – 2pm
Wednesday 25 January – Wednesday 1 March
(6 sessions)

About YourDNA
Established in 2013, YourDNA Creative Arts is a community based arts organisation committed to developing the lives of Disabled people through arts based programs including drama, TV, film, animation, musical theatre (song and dance), creative writing (literacy), instrumental music, photography, painting and drawing. YourDNA Creative Arts empowers Disabled people to impact society in which they live, by unlocking their imaginations. When imaginations are inspired, so too is the world.

About Janice Florence
Janice Florence is the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Weave Movement Theatre. Janice is based in Melbourne and has trained in dance in Australia and the USA. In 1983 she completed a Graduate Diploma of Movement and Dance at Melbourne University. For 10 years, she was a performer, teacher and researcher with State of Flux, one of the first Australian companies to include a dancer with a disability. Janice has worked and had residencies with Karen Nelson, exponent of ‘diverse dance’ in the USA and with Blue-Eyed Soul, Touchdown and CanDoCo in the UK.

Janice has been a pioneering force in the field of inclusive dance and physical theatre for the past 30 years and in the wider arts sector. Since acquiring a disability as the result of a dance related accident, she has experimented, explored and consolidated first with her own transformed body and then with the many performers with disability who have passed through the Weave Movement Theatre company and the workshops for people outside the company, including the first national professional development workshop for performers with disability in 2014 supported by Arts Access Australia and Australia Council for the Arts. Janice was the inaugural winner of the Australia Council Disabiity Arts-Established Artist Award in 2019.

Image credit: Tess Kelly