Dance

Selection of different entertainment offerings. -Hula Hoop Performers (Day time + LED roving or stage shows) -Silk Fans Dance Performers (Flowing silk fans roving entertainment) -Fire Entertainment (single performer show or multiple performers, hula hoops, fan, swords) -Facilitated play space and workshops (For hula hoops only, all ages) For more information please visit my website: www.talztwirlz.com

WeiZen Ho has been devising and presenting open-disciplinary performances since 1999. Her practice has expanded through music-visual concerts, into solo and participatory works to occupy spaces of uncertainty between performance, ritual and installation. These works employ significant accoutrements and deep imagery to shift and coalesce relationships between body, voice, sound and site. In this process she investigates methods for accessing the memory-body through vocal-bodywork, improvisational techniques and re-imagined psycho-physical states of spirit possession. These are informed by Southeast Asian rituals and animistic practices she has witnessed in her ongoing research processes. WeiZen is increasingly drawn to performance interventions in public places, experiencing and inhabiting time in a more nuanced manner through long-duration works. She spent a month in September 2023 devising and presenting public space performance interventions in New York as part of a 'Live Art Tour 8' with other international artists. In November 2023, she adapted 'Stories from the Body (SFTB) #1', with a performance trajectory from the park, public footpath, pools and Louise Bourgeois’ 34 ft 'Maman' sculpture on Art Gallery Rd, to the new North Wing site. This was part of a 2-day opening programme, 'Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day' exhibition, Art Gallery NSW.

Born in Sydney, I have lived in the Blue Mountains for 16 years. As a performance creator and visual artist I work at the intersection of dance, installation, theatre and architecture. My recent works fall into the categories of performance art and installation. I work in solo, duet or group formation depending on the project. I also collaborate with my partner WeiZen Ho. In Sydney I was the founding member of seminal performance ensemble Gravity Feed (1992-2004) and of Gravity Research Institute (2000-2019). I conceive, devise, design, and choreograph and direct performance projects. I especially work with materials and objects and with site responsive concepts. My projects and performance address the essence of site, employing materials that perform in relation to and with body and place. I’m driven to seek underlying historical residues and my work reflects my personal post-Holocaust legacy in which I’m particularly focussed on the diasporic condition. I’m influenced by both contemporary and traditional cultural and artistic practices of Japan, China and SE Asia, with practice, participation and research in those regions. Recently I’ve presented work for smaller festivals in Newcastle and Maitland as well at Cementa15 and Cementa22 in Kandos. WeiZen Ho and I were commissioned artists for the 2022 Keir Choreographic Awards.

Veronica is one of the very few flamenco dancers in this country who has an extensive history as a professional flamenco dancer working in Spain alongside many of the most famous dancers, singers and musicians at the time. In Australia Veronica was the flamenco dancer in Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker in 2000. She created “exotic choreography” for the stage version of Strictly Ballroom for Baz Luhrmann. Veronica also choreographed the dance sequences for Carmen and La Traviata for Opera Australia on several occasions. She conducts weekly flamenco classes in Katoomba from beginners to advanced and also organises classes via Zoom from well-known teachers.