kate champion

Kate Champion is the Artistic Director of Force Majeure, a dance theatre company based in Sydney that she established in 2002. Champion’s first professional engagement as a dancer was with the Munich-based Iwanson Dance Company at the age of 16. In 1985 she became a founding member of Dance North before moving to Adelaide to become part of the Australian Dance Theatre. In 1992 she travelled to London, where she spent an influential period with DV8 working as production assistant and then performer on Strange Fish in both stage and BBC film versions. In 1996, Champion was the recipient of Arts NSW’s Robert Helpmann Scholarship for choreographic excellence. That same year she created and performed her solo work Face Value, which toured Australia two years later. This production earned her a 1998 Green Room Award and a MO Award.

In 1997, Champion choreographed Neil Armfield’s internationally acclaimed production of Cloudstreet, and directed and devised Under the Influence for Legs on the Wall, which premiered at Belvoir Street in Sydney and toured internationally. The following year she re-joined DV8 in London where she worked as rehearsal director on a European tour of Lloyd Newson’s Enter Achilles and collaborator and performer on The Happiest Day Of My Life. In 2000 she was Newson’s assistant for the DV8/Sydney Olympic Arts Festival production of The Cost of Living.

In June 2001, the Sydney Opera House commissioned Champion’s solo show, About Face. In 2002 the Sydney and Melbourne Festivals co-commissioned Same, same But Different, the first performance by the newly created company Force Majeure. Champion went on to direct Force Majeure’s Already Elsewhere at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House for the 2005 Sydney Festival as well as Tenebrae-Part 1 and 2 in collaboration with the Song Company at the Sydney Town Hall. Force Majeure performed Already Elsewhere at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon in September 2006. In 2008 Champion directed Force Majeure’s The Age I’m In for the Sydney and Adelaide Festival, touring it to Dublin, Montreal and Seoul in 2009. Already Elsewhere was awarded Most Outstanding Performance by a Company at the Australian Dance Awards in 2006 as was The Age I’m In in 2008. In 2010 Kate Champion choreographed Sydney Theatre Company’s Spring Awakening and Opera Australia’s production of Bliss as well as directing Force Majeure’s production Not In A Million Years. (Text courtesy of the artist.)
www.forcemajeure.com.au