Dame Peggy van Praagh was the founding artistic director of The Australian Ballet (1962). In the 1960s and 1970s, she collaborated with many of Australia's leading artists to establish the legendary Armidale summer schools, through which young Australian choreographers were given opportunity and encouragement. Peggy was also one of the founding members of Ausdance.
After Dame Peggy's death, the trustees of her estate made a bequest to Ausdance National with the specific purpose of supporting choreographic development that advances the profession. Lina Limosani is the third recipient of the Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship.
Lina Limosani has been a choreographer since 2000, beginning her choreographic development through the Australian Dance Theatre’s in-house choreographic seasons followed by national and international residencies and commissions. In 2012 she was selected as one of six choreographers for the Swiss International Choreographers Project in Zurich, and since 2009 she has been a resident choreographer at the Fonty’s Dance Academy in Holland.
Under the banner of Limosaniprojekts, Lina has been creating independent works including A Delicate Situation, which was nominated for three Boh Cameronian Awards in Malaysia and a 2015 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance.
An original member of Garry Stewart's Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), Lina has since worked with Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move, Narelle Benjamin, Shona McCullagh (NZ Dance Company), Frances Darth and Troy Mundy. She was a member of Scotland's David Hughes Dance Company, working with physical theatre director Al Seed, Switzerland's Cathy Marston and London's Arthur Pita. While in Europe, she also worked with Scotish artist Alex Riggs and Company Plan B, along with Munich's Micha Purucker.
Lina will use her Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship to hone her theatrical devising practices including her approach to constructing narrative and characters and working with the voice, particularly techniques for warm-up, projection, endurance and dynamic range. To do this, she will collaborate with South Australian director Andrew Brackman on the second-stage development of her new work A tale or two, a double bill of two highly physical dance theatre works One's wicked ways and What lies within.
As a developing choreographer, I have been nurturing my craving to investigate the physical representation of stories, and this has been driving me to discover unique ways to find a synthesis between narrative and contemporary dance. By taking the things that interest me such as comedy, theatre, clowning and horror, and blending it with my physical history as a dancer and performer, I have been creating a fusion of genres to create visually charged work with a visceral movement language. I am using this ‘genre mashup’ to explore and develop new models of how to communicate with people and discover alternative ways of expressing myself in this world while exploring my questions about human nature and behaviour.
Lina Limosani's A Delicate Situation was shortlisted for the 2015 Australian Dance Award for 2015 Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance. Photo: Chris Herzfeld.