Your recent work seems to explore the subconscious.

I'm fascinated by this concept, though it can sometimes feel like a default position or a relinquishing of responsibility. What interests me most is the relationship between our thoughts and our bodies. I love the way the body can deliver insights ahead of the conscious mind.

With “Agitato,” I became captivated by the work of Fanny Mendelssohn, a composer I first encountered at VCA while studying Ashton’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” which features music by her brother Felix Mendelssohn. Felix received far more critical acclaim due to the gendered expectations of that era, but Fanny's music haunted me for years. There was this one piece—just one minute and forty seconds long—described as a “virtuosic whirlwind.” I became enamoured with that phrase and inspired by her courageous path against the sex-based constraints of her time.

You've worked with dramaturgs, including recently on “Agitato.” How important is dramaturgy to your choreographic process?

For “Agitato,” I worked with Anny Mokotow, who has incredible patience. I can talk extensively about ideas, but she has this ability to distill them into their essence. During our research phase, we uncovered substantial material that fed into the piece's narrative. She reminded me what I was trying to investigate when I would wander off course, gently guiding me back to my core intentions.

What other artistic collaborators are integral to your work, and how do they influence the final pieces?

The dancers themselves are hugely integral—the works are deeply dramaturgical in nature. I involve them completely and value their perspectives. We have regular conferences where we share feedback and actively reshape the work together.

In “Agitato,” the music functioned as the structure through which we sought the arc of our story. Duane Morrison worked closely with me on sound design to uncover these layers. We examined Greek tragedy trajectories, using those traditional arcs as anchors while building suspense and momentum. I was interested in these aspects of Greek tragedies after creating a work for Bundanon [an art museum in New South Wales] which focused on the myth of Electra. With “Agitato” I focused on drama in the body and considered the trajectory of Greek tragedies as a way to inform the structure and form.

These elements of tension and narrative worked in harmony with both the choreography and the costumes, which were artfully designed by Andrew Treloar. We worked slowly, sustaining and restraining, allowing the costume design to reinforce and elevate the choreographic elements.

Given that much of your work involves improvisation and collaborative creation, does this present particular challenges when remounting pieces? Does it also create opportunities for each performance to be unique?

The work can definitely evolve, which means pieces often need their original cast because it respects their specific contributions to the creation. Revisiting a work is rare but always a lovely opportunity when it happens. The “one season only” nature of much dance is both beautiful and challenging, but because I'm drawn to improvisational inspiration, this approach works for my practice.

This year, I established a studio space in Abbotsford. It functions as a residency, but I use it monthly for “happenings”—informal gatherings where I invite local dancers to collaborate. These sessions generate long-form developments and create a cyclical feedback loop as we develop new work together. “Agitato” actually emerged from this process.

These happenings serve as a kind of “creative fitness”—a way of continually refining work, improving my craft, and ensuring that what I offer makes it worthwhile for dancers to venture out on a winter night to the studio, even with no guaranteed product as the outcome.

If you were to summarize your work overall, what would you say defines it?

I think my work fundamentally operates in an exploratory mode. I love bringing the concept of revelation through dance into performance. It's endlessly fascinating to me that there are actions and expressions you simply can't do on the tram that you can do on stage—and sometimes those stage moments are truer, strike deeper chords than our everyday movement vocabularies ever could.