Melanie Lane
Melanie is an Australian choreographer and performer of European/Javanese heritage working between Naarm (Melbourne) and Ngunnawal/Ngambri country (Canberra). She is one of Australia’s leading choreographic voices with commissions from Australasian Dance Collective, Dance North, Chunky Move, Sydney Dance Company, Schauspiel Leipzig and West Australian Ballet (among others). Melanie won the prestigious Keir Choreographic Award in 2018 and the 2017 Leipziger Bewegungskunstpreis in Germany. Lane has been nominated for both Green Room and Helpmann awards as both a choreographer and a dancer including the Shirley McKechnie award for choreography (2020).
Her collaborative work includes projects with Marrugeku/Bhenji Ra, UK music producer Clark, video artists Amos Gebhardt and Leyla Stevens, theatre maker Adena Jacobs and visual artists Martin Böttger, Ash Keating and Bridie Lunney. These works have spanned across international festivals, theatres and galleries.
Her choreographic work for theatre and opera includes English National Opera’s Salome (London, 2018) and Burgtheater’s Trojan Women (Vienna, 2022) directed by Adena Jacobs.
As an Independent artist Lane’s ambitious creations work seamlessly across the visual arts, music and film. Her work interrogates physical and cultural histories to explore current social mythologies and extrapolates these into surreal futures that are confounded, broken and reconfigured. These independent works have been presented globally at festivals and theatres such as HAU Berlin, Tanz im August, Schauspiel Leipzig, Uzes Danse Festival, Indonesian Dance Festival, O Espaco do Tempo, Dance Massive, Carriageworks, Arts House and Sydney Opera House. Drawing on her European and Indonesian heritage Lane moves seamlessly between cultural landscapes and influences. Melanie engages regularly across projects in Indonesia as choreographer, collaborator, performer and mentor.
As a performer, Lane has worked with artists such as Tino Seghal, Jan Pusch, Arco Renz, Eun Me Ahn, Club Guy and Roni, Jo Lloyd, Antony Hamilton and Lucy Guerin. Melanie choreographed the 2015 and 2017 live shows for UK electronic musician Clark (Warp records), performing at over 30 international venues including Moma PS1 New York, Villette Sonique Paris, Funkhaus Berlin and Sonar Festivals in Barcelona/Istanbul.
As a mentor and artistic capacity building facilitator, Melanie shares creative practices with young artists and artists with intellectual disability (QL2, e.motion21, The Chameleon Collective).
In 2022, Melanie was Artist in Residence for Digital Innovation at the University of Canberra x Belco Arts, transposing choreographic languages through robotics and animation. She is the 2023/24 Choreographer in Residence at Chunky Move, Resident Artist at The Substation Melbourne and Associate artist at QL2 Canberra. She was the 2015 Resident Director at Lucy Guerin Inc and is currently a 2023/24 Australia Council for the Arts Fellow. Melanie is Chair of the Board at Dancehouse, Melbourne.