Jacqueline Dreessens

I am a choreographer, dancer, dance therapist and a graduate of Deakin University and the University of Limerick, Ireland, 2017.  Born and raised on the Surf Coast and Geelong, I bring over 30 years of professional teaching and performing experience in schools, universities, festivals, corporate and community rituals and celebrations.  I’m an ethnochoreologist and community arts practitioner in choreography and percussion.  I received a Stepping Stones Scholarship for the Masters of Arts in Ethnochoreology (First Class Honours) at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick.  My research interest is in Performance Ritual and how people express their identity and connection to their sense of place through music, dance and across the Arts.  I draw inspiration from nature and the environment, researching the Ecology of Place and Sensoriality through an intersection of poetry, film, sound and movement within Dance, Anthropology and Ethnochoreology.

Visit her Echelon page here

Artist’s Statement

I will explore my connection to place through embodied experience and performance ritual.  This choreographic investigation into the Ecology of Place and Sensoriality is explored through an intersection of poetry, film, sound and movement.  My auto ethnographical research into Mangroves from the Water will begin with visits to the mangroves site by boat, documenting my experience through film.  My response to the site specific will then be explored and expressed through movement and improvisation in the dance studio.  These authentic movement responses and captured video footage of my improvisations will be edited together with the initial film of the specific mangroves site.  This ten minute film will be centered around my sensorial experience in the mangroves investigating the question: what is my permanent reality manifesting in this transient moment?  With this question I will use poetry to further develop my movement response by using words to describe my embodied experience of the Mangroves from the Water.  I will then dance (in present real time) this poetic response, in front of my ten minute film (past real time).  Together with the audience, we will both simultaneously see the shadow projectory of my future present self dancing my sensorial embodied experience within the Mangroves from the Water.

Text edited by Zahidah Zeytoun Millie – Curator