Danielle Micich Delving Into Dance podcast

5+ y ago 31:04

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Image includes Harrison Elliott - Image by Brett Boardman

Danielle Micich is choreographer, director and performer, current Artistic Director of Force Majeure.

Force Majeure was established in 2002 by founding Artistic Director Kate Champion and is a multi-disciplinary dance company that works across form often collaborating with actors, writers, visual artists, musicians, composers and filmmakers. Shortly after arriving at Force Majeure, the company lost major funding from The Australia Council, as a result of funding cuts to the small to medium parts of the dance sector. This presented a unique challenge to the company who has managed to continue to form new partnerships and collaborations at a time of much change. Danielle, explained the unique challenges of this period as:

Image includes Lauren Langlois and Ghenoa Gela- Image by Brett Boardman

“You have to restructure replan, redo, you have to start from ground up again, you have to be realistic, you have to be responsible, you have to keep things alive, when you don't have that structure any more around you. As much as I found that really overwhelming a lot of the time I'm really proud of where we are at the moment as a company, because, you know, there's only two full time staff members at Force Majeure … we work very hard to maintain a presence and a relevance. It's been difficult, but it's, we're still here and we're doing great.”

Before working at Force Majeure, Danielle worked for a range of companies in various roles including Buzz Dance Theatre, QL2, Sydney Theatre Company, Barking Gecko and was the Artistic Director of STEPS Youth Dance Company for four years.

“I want us to all be held responsible for watching what is happening on stage, as opposed to 'I can't see the person next to me. And so therefore, it doesn't matter'. Actually, I want us to all take part in what I'm putting on stage and be responsible and have thoughts about that. If we do that, then we're having a bigger conversation about what has actually on our stage today.”

Danielle’s first large work for Force Majeure, was You Animal You, which premiered at Sydney Festival in 2018. It is a stunning work that is both visceral and intimate that position the audience close to the action. You Animal You, will be presented as part of Dance Massive at Arts House.

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