Restless Dance Theatre (Restless) offers a dynamic repertoire of 10 innovative and inclusive works available for touring.
From innovative choreography to experimental storytelling techniques, each work dares to venture into uncharted territory, pushing the boundaries of what dance and theatre can achieve. Our work is flexible to meet festival requirements, whether indoors or outdoors in the public realm. Our range includes intimate one-on-one experiences and large-scale productions designed to fill grand venues.
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Accessible, Intimate, Transportable A concept by Michelle Heaven and Ben Cobham presented by Restless Dance Theatre - a groundbreaking project combining performance, research, and advocacy to promote arts in health. Directed by choreographer Michelle Heaven and featuring Restless Dance Theatre, The Lensical reimagines the intersection of live performance and immersive art, creating intimate dance-theatre experiences for audiences in hospitals. Bespoke design by Ben Cobham will transform patient rest areas into intimate sanctuaries for boutique performances that enhance the viewer experience a...
4 Rooms, 4 Diverse Experiences. Most people are sexual beings, with sexual thoughts, attitudes, feelings, desires, and romantic fantasies. Having a physical or intellectual disability doesn’t change your sexuality and your desire to express it. Yet, the subject of people with intellectual disability having romantic dreams and sexual desires is still taboo. Private View invites audiences to become voyeurs; to observe people in their domestic spaces and discover their romantic dreams and hidden desires. Haunting melodies from Carla Lippis are deeply intertwined within the work and serve as th...
Vulnerability, uncertainty and risk through movement. Exposed, explores vulnerability, uncertainty and risk through movement, design, and music. Be taken on a journey where the breath is a metaphor for feeling threatened or safe, agitated or calm, and the sonic possibilities of breath and entwined into the mesmerising score. Director Michelle Ryan said “It is my response to the feeling of vulnerability – a powerful standing up for oneself. Most of us are free to make choices about what parts of our life we keep private and what is public. But for some, this choice is often not so straigh...
Enter the expansive mirror-maze of this immersive dance and art installation. Stand transfixed as dancers weave around the 24 mirrored plinths, light swirls and sound pulsates.A reality-bending meditation on bodies of light, and the lightness of the body. Guests are encouraged to meander through the mirrored labyrinth, where roaming, shifting, and drifting can alter your point of view.Once inside the maze, witness how the tables turn as you transition from observer to observed. Stationary dancers scattered throughout the maze paradoxically appear to move, while moving performer...
About Counterpoise is a landmark initiative that brought together a diverse array of global and local entities, with two inclusive dance companies and a university at the heart of the project: Restless Dance Theatre; 29Dong Dance Theatre; and University of South Australia. Collaborating with academics Dr Lee and Professor Rentschler at University of South Australia Connect2Abilities, Korean Music Project (KMP) featuring Australian musician Clara Gant, lighting designer, Mathew Adey, and film director Matthew Byrne, and Korean documentary company, The Third Point Person. This ambitious collabo...
Guttered explores the notion of being a winner or a loser within the context of ten pin bowling and reunites the award-winning creative team from Intimate Space. Set in a classic bowling alley, with the mesmerising sights and sounds, the audience are up close to the action as the performers put themselves on the line for success or failure. Set in a classic bowling alley, with the mesmerising sights and sounds, the audience are immersed in the competitive and social interaction of a game. Guttered further develops the presentation of work in non-traditional venues, which Restless explored so...
This dance work, directed by Michelle Ryan, is a response to the work of Expressionist artist Georges Rouault. Ryan explains that the imperfect form of the body and the troubled soul represented in his work resonate with how people with disability can feel and be perceived. Seeing through Darkness is an immersive experience, one that is both a participatory exhibition and a 17-minute performance, in which elements of dance, music, lighting design and moving image are combined. Following the performance, the audience will be able to transform the space themselves – by means of their own sha...
A dancer, a stranger, and a moment of meaningful connection.Created by Australia’s leading inclusive dance company Restless Dance Theatre, Ecoute Pour Voir | Listen to See is an intimate experience of discovery to rethink our perspectives on what it means to be human, and the diverse abilities that we all possess.Scattered in a performance space, one duo and three solo dancers are equipped with headphones and an MP3 player, inviting audience members to share a three-minute choreographic exchange. Audience members may choose to experience different intimate performances by moving fro...
A bold, visually striking dance documentary that celebrates human connection and asks us to rethink our notions of perfection. The acclaimed, genre-defying Chunky Move and beloved Adelaide-based company Restless Dance Theatre – whose troupe consists of performers with disabilities – develop a major new work that tests the boundaries of group harmony and myths of creative perfection. This is a journey in which dancers Jianna, Mike, Charlie, Ben, Darcy and Cody find a shared creative language that will take them from their homes in Adelaide and Melbourne to the international stage in the UK...
Intimate Space is a series of experiential site-specific solo and duet works of dance theatre presented within a hotel. On this travelling adventure, a Hotels sophisticated bar and lush rooms with views are contrasted by the stark undertones of the nooks and crannies of its back-of-house operations. Guided by an evocative soundscape, the physical conversation takes a similarly diverse journey. Guests will witness a tender and cheeky duet in a private room then an urgent physical explosion in the laundry. All looks neat and tidy but what is going on behind the scenes of these emotional dance v...
