BIOGRAPHY

Janette is a Melbourne-based dance artist and collaborator. Her distinctive practice is informed by somatic, movement-based improvisation modalities with a core evolving from the tradition of Butoh.

Janette identifies strongly with her hybrid Malaysian-Chinese-Indonesian heritage which carries through into rich stories in her visceral improvisation work, with an aim to also challenge the dominant cultural stereotypical notions of Asian women.

Preferring to work site-specifically, her performances often straddle and intersect the narratives of time and place, with personal experiences, rituals and ancestry. Her captivating performances invite audiences into landscapes where fragments of memory, lived experiences and imagination meet – addressing themes such as ‘home’, ‘sense of place’ and ‘loss’.

Janette’s interest in the performing body as a multisensory entity and its interactive relationship to environments has resulted in numerous evocative site-responsive performances in galleries and other non-theatre settings across Australia and in South East Asia. Working as choreographer and performer recent highlights include The Seafarer’s Welcome (MAPPING Melbourne Festival 2018), Demolish (Bendigo 2018), Under a Willow – a Long Way from China (Castlemaine State Festival, 2017), Seven-ness (MPavilion, 2016), Occupy/Preoccupy (Mapping Melbourne Festival, 2015), The Colour of Silence (‘Melbourne Now’ NGV 2014) tonglen* (MCA, Sydney 2013) and performances in Malaysia (Crossroads at Dawn, 2015) and at the Arts Island Festival in Indonesia (White Moth 2014, The Meeting 2013).

She has also performed and collaborated with some of Australia’s leading choreographers – Victoria Chui (What Happened in Shanghai, Asia TOPA 2020), Tony Yap (Silenzio 2009/2013, Beyond Butoh# Series 2001-2008) and Yumi Umiumare (BB0# Series 2001-2008), and musicians/sound artist Mindy Meng Wang (What Happened in Shanghai, Asia TOPA 2020), Ria Soemardjo (The Echoes Project Mapping Melbourne 2017; moths are calling 2014) and Darius Kedros (Milk Bars 2016).

Dance Australia Critics Survey nominated Janette Dancer to Watch for her 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.