Siobhan McKenna
Siobhan is a Melbourne/Naarm based choreographer and dancer. She grew up in the Bega Valley in NSW, on Yuin Country before moving to the city where she had the privilege of studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts (dance) at Victorian College of the Arts, graduating in 2016.
The journey she has undertaken as an artist over the last seven years includes experience performing in other’s work, creating her own work and both teaching and participating in various workshops and residency programs. Her choreographic interests consider relationships between the various materialities of movement, voice, space and rhythm, with a particular focus on exploring the fragility and multiplicity of communication, blurring the lines between meaningful and meaningless and sense and nonsense.
Siobhan’s choreographic work and practice has been supported by organisations and venues such as Dancehouse, Temperance Hall, Lucy Guerin Inc., The Substation, Dance Massive, Darebin Arts, The Gunpowder Trading Post and Critical Path, Australian Dance Theatre and the Tanja Liedtke Foundation and ImplusTanz (Vienna). Her choreographic credits include, Rhythmic Fictions (Darebin Arts Speakeasy 2022), Relay (Melbourne Fringe Festival at Temperance Hall 2022), Drama 2,3,4 (Lucy Guerin Inc. in partnership with the Substation 2019) and Utterance (Dancehouse with Dance Massive Festival 2019 and Melbourne Fringe Festival 2017). Both Utterance and Rhythmic Fictions were nominated for Best Choreography in the 2019 and 2022 Green Room Awards and Utterance also received the Melbourne Fringe Festival’s 2017 Best Dance Award and Temperance Hall Award.
In 2022, Siobhan was incredibly grateful to receive a fellowship from the late Chloe Munro AO and Lucy Guerin Inc alongside other amazing dance artists. This year Siobhan was accepted into the ATLAS scholarship program, with mentor Angélique Willkie at ImpulsTanz where she began the development of a new work. Since 2021 Siobhan has also worked as a teacher and rehearsal director at the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne University) and has taught workshops and developed choreographic work with youth companies Yellowheel and Fling Physical Theatre.