BIOGRAPHY

Janette Hoe is a Melbourne/Naarm-based dance artist focused on using dance to foster cross-cultural dialogue. With 29 years of experience, she has created contemporary solo and collaborative works with artists from various artforms across Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Rooted in Butoh and somatic improvisation movement modalities from both Eastern and Western origins, her practice explores the psychophysical and 'archival' body. Drawing on her hybrid Malaysian-Chinese-Indonesian heritage, her work addresses shifting identities and multiple belongings. Her long-term autobiographical project KuehLapis examines the ageing body at significant thresholds in a woman’s life.

The struggle to express solely with words has seen Janette develop, over time, a site responsive/specific practice that extends into visual, gestural, and material components, that add to her artistic expression. Her sensory-rich works blend narratives of time and place, inviting audiences into evocative performance worlds where fragments of memory, lived experiences, and imagination meet.

Her dance background includes training with Butoh practitioners Yumi Umiumare, Lena Ang, and Yoshito Ohno, trance-dance with Tony Yap, Body-Mind Centering with Alice Cummins, Kim Sargent-Wishart, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

Selected collaborations include solo performances in Agak-Agak (Mapping Melbourne Festival 2020-21) a dance video with musicians Ria Soemardjo and Mindy Meng Wang, Museum Undone (Kyneton Museum, 2021) with Metanoia Theatre, What Happened in Shanghai (Asia TOPA, 2020) with choreographer Victoria Chui, Under a Willow – a Long Way from China (Castlemaine State Festival, 2017) with theatre director Rebecca Russell, tonglen* (MCA, Sydney, 2013) with multidisciplinary artist Domenico de Clario and The Colour of Silence (‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria 2014); and solo works in Malaysia (Crossroads at Dawn, 2015) and at the Arts Island Festival in Indonesia (White Moth, 2014) and collaborations with Jefri Usman (Indonesia) and Biance Pulungan (Germany/Indonesia) in Masa for the 2024 Maek Arts Festival. Since 2021 Janette has also performed with Born in a Taxi in various capacities.

She has an ongoing practice with long-time collaborator, Australian/Indonesian musician Ria Soemardjo in The Echoes Project. Commissioned by Mapping Melbourne Festival, they created two participatory events which took audiences on an extraordinary journey through Melbourne’s Chinatown (2017) and the Mission to Seafarer’s historic site (2018).

Dance Australia Critics Survey nominated Janette Dancer to Watch for her self-driven full length works No Candles Please (2006) and moths are calling (2014). Granted an Australian Postgraduate Award, Janette completed a practice-led Masters by Research project in 2016 at The University of Melbourne (Faculty of VCA and MCM). The research investigates embodied histories, triggered by place, in dance improvisation. Her exegesis, Performer as Medium: Connecting Past and Present in Improvisation can be downloaded here.

Janette also finds fulfillment in mentoring young artists from various art forms and CALD backgrounds through the Union House Theatre’s Mentoring Program and choreographing for young non-dancers internationally. Beyond her performance work, she channels her energy into managing her own graphic design business, creating brand identities and publicity materials for independent artists and arts organizations across Victoria.