Explore Contemporary First Peoples Dance Practice
Discover on-demand workshops led by acclaimed First Peoples choreographers. Each resource blends artist-led movement, creative insights, and classroom-ready materials to help expand your knowledge and understanding of Contemporary First Peoples dance and respectfully introduce your students to the breadth of practice with engaging, hands-on learning materials.
Best of all, the Inspire on-demand workshops are free for registered teachers and First Peoples.
Why choose Inspire on-demand workshops?
- Learn from the Artist – Gain insights into the creative process of leading, independent First Peoples choreographers.
- Move & Reflect – Engage in artist-led movement and choreographic explorations at your own pace.
- Ready for Your Classroom – Each workshop is paired with a resource pack and includes lesson plans, interviews, and a catalogue of works to inspire your students.
- Flexible Access – Watch anytime, revisit content, and integrate learnings when it best suits your teaching schedule.
Choose your workshop
FREE to enrol for registered teachers and First Peoples people, stream anytime.
Primary F-6 with Amelia Jean O’Leary
Secondary 7-10 with Luke Currie-Richardson
VCE Dance with Joel Bray
Primary F-6 with Ngioka Bunda-Heath
Secondary 7-10 with Ngioka Bunda-Heath
Meet the artists
Amelia is a proud First Nations Gamilaroi Yinarr from Northern New South Wales currently living in Naarm (Melbourne). Her dance practice is about human and spiritual experiencing. Through complexity and adversity, she finds ways to tell coded and poetically rich stories. Her dances are personal and personified from her multidisciplinary skills in theatre, film and sound design.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2021, O’Leary performed and created multiple works including Yinarr (Adelaide Fringe and Dancehouse); A Certain Mumble (Darebin Arts Speakeasy) and STAUNCH ASF (Melbourne Fringe), for which she was awarded Best Emerging Indigenous Artist at Melbourne Fringe 2023, and nominated for a Green Room Award for Pioneering Artistry: Breaking Ground. Amelia also choreographed One Day as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s First Peoples Young Artists Program at Yirramboi Festival. O’Leary is the artist in residence at Abbotsford Convent and is currently developing multiple new works.
Naarm-based Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri dancer and performance-maker and Artistic Director of Joel Bray Dance. He performed with European companies and choreographers and with CHUNKY MOVE. Joel’s dance-theatre encounters in unorthodox spaces spring from his Wiradjuri heritage, and use humour to engage audiences in rituals about sex, history, trauma and healing. Joel makes his work in collaboration with Elders, Community and Country.
Joel’s works – Biladurang, Dharawungara, Daddy, Considerable Sexual License, Garabari and Giraru Galing Ganhagirri – have toured to major arts festivals in Australia and overseas. Joel has made works for Artshouse, CHUNKY MOVE, Sydney Dance Company, the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Luke Currie-Richardson, a proud descendant of the Kuku Yalanji, Djabugay, Mununjali, Butchulla, and Meriam peoples, has dedicated over 14 years to sharing powerful Indigenous stories through dance, film, photography, spoken word, and fashion. Touring with Bangarra Dance Theatre and Marrugeku, he’s collaborated with artists like Ghenoa Gela and Wesley Enoch. In 2023, Luke debuted his choreography GEDOVAIT in the Stephanie Lake Escalator program. His photography, featured in Vogue and Marie Claire, won the People’s Choice Award in the 2024 National Photographic Portrait Prize. In 2022, he made his theatre acting debut in Kalanga Atu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. As a poet, his work has been showcased at Sydney Festival’s The Vigil and published by Red Room Poetry. Through his multidisciplinary practice, Luke amplifies Indigenous culture, challenging perceptions of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia.
Ngioka Bunda-Heath is Wakka Wakka, Ngugi from Queensland (matrilineal) and Biripi from New South Wales (patrilineal). She completed her Advanced Diploma in the Performing Arts (Dance) at the Aboriginal Centre of the Performing Arts and her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) at the Victorian College of the Arts.
After graduating VCA, she accepted a traineeship with Bangarra Dance Theatre with their Youth Education Program Rekindling. Ngioka is currently a Performer and Choreographer for Mariaa Randall’s Indigenous Female Dance Company DUBAIKUNGKAMIYALK (DKM). She has travelled overseas, dancing in Noumea, New Caledonia with Compine Maado, Banff in Canada as part of the International Indigenous Dance Residency and took part of the World Dance Alliance in France. Ngioka performed in Los Angeles for the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference and Festival and attended the First Nations Dialogues in New York.
Bonus resource
Complete any of the workshops in the Inspire Professional Development Program and get access to the Big Heart Education Resource for FREE!
The Big Heart Education Resource offers students unique insight into Contemporary First Peoples dance and culture. Developed by Ausdance VIC/NSW in 2018 and updated in 2024, the education resource builds on the themes, stories and issues that lay within the choreography of Big Dance [BIG HEART STORY], by renowned choreographers Frances Rings and Craig Bary.
The comprehensive education package is available as a digital download and includes:
- An introduction and general advice
- Detailed unit plan aligned to the Australian Curriculum for each band level
- 10 lesson plans per unit
- Teaching tips on inclusion and access, safe spaces, warming up and down, working to the strengths of your students, and protocols for Indigenous dance
Acknowledgements
This program was presented in partnership with Dancehouse with the supported of the Department of Education, Victoria, through the Strategic Partnerships Program.
