Dean Walsh

Dean Walsh is an award-winning Australian contemporary dancer, performer and choreographer and a respected facilitator and educator – in professional, tertiary as well as wider community outreach capacities. Over more than two decades he has refined quite a unique set of approaches to ‘education’ and creative leadership. He’s also a visual artist, writer and engages in movement research that is influenced by ‘extended cognition’ theories and the infinite sense-making processes from within and between our ‘bodies of water’ – human, animal and environmental. He has practiced and advocated for arts access and inclusion since the mid 90’s, including working within communities (Sydney, regional and overseas), offering creative agency for people, whether they align with being an artist or not. Many of these people have too often fallen ‘under-the-radar’ of other community programs, and definitely many of the ‘professional’ arts systems.

Since 1991 Dean has made more than 40 works, ranging from 10 to 90 minutes. Most of these have been solo, but also four collaborative duets, three trios and one larger group work. Some of his works have toured nationally and/or internationally. He has also worked with companies: The oPera Project (Dir. Nigel Kellaway), Performing Creatures (Dir. Nikki Heywood), One Extra Company (Dir. Graeme Watson and Julie-Anne Long), Australian Dance Theatre (Dir. Garry Stewart), Stalker Theatre (Dir. David Clarkson - as commissioned choreographer and perfomer), Restless Dance Theatre (Dir. Philip Channels - as commissioned choreographer), Sydney Dance Company (teacher for open public classes and tutor for their pre-professional year program – Dir. Linda Gamblin), Sydney Theatre Company (Dir. Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton - as movement consultant), DV8 Physical Theatre (London – Dir. Lloyd Newson) & No Apology (Amsterdam – Dir. Paul Selwyn Norton).

Over the years Dean has facilitated many workshops across Australia, in NYC, Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Matsuyama in Japan. He has tutored for most of Australia’s tertiary dance and performance courses – including choreographing works for the 2nd and 3rd year students on 6 occasions. He has taught countless warm-up classes for many Australian dance companies. Between 2014 and 2018, he was invited as guest lecturer in the school of Architecture and Design at UTS (University of Technology) in Sydney, in his choreographic and movement research practice.

As a passionate scuba diver since 2008, Dean has interlaced his immersive experiences of hundreds of dives (as well as research collaborations with environmental scientists and agencies), into his diverse experiences in contemporary dance/theatre, choreography, Queer performance, access and inclusion advocacy, teaching, collaborating and wider community outreach. He’s remained mindful of keeping his practice keyed into dynamic and responsive creative access and inclusion for all bodies and minds – whilst being influenced by marine environmental ecologies. Since 2013 he has referred to this overarching practice as PrimeOrderly. You can read more on this, here.

Context is everything:

Whilst all this might sound like a professional life lived to the fullest and finest in terms of the arts in Australia, Dean’s journey, whilst very full, has been very far from always fine and easy - even by independent artist terms. Stemming from a lower socio-economic background, one riddled with all manner of abuse and neglect, many of Dean’s earlier performance works (solo and group) choreographically wrestled and conveyed some of society’s more ‘wicked problems’ – albeit with generous dollops of irony, wit and poetic craft - counterpoints to scoring some otherwise very serious personal and wider socio-political themes - through visceral, even quite raw, performances. Themes include: lower socio-economic precarity, domestic violence and its inter-generational influences, childhood sexual abuse from a Queer male perspective, Queer / homophobic violence (domestic and societal), reflections on the personal and communal effects of the HIV / AIDS crisis and the precarity of living through it all in a climate of wider ignorance, fear and hatred.

Time for a life change:

Although ‘wildly’ creative, Dean was never exposed to traditional arts culture as a child. Quite by chance, in 1987, at the age of 21, he stumbled across dance when invited by a friend to see Michael Clark and Company at the Sydney Festival. Then, encouraged by a social worker, later that year he attended Margaret Chappel’s (Chappie’s) beginner’s contemporary dance classes at the Bodenwieser Dance Centre (BDC).

Chappie, a gifted educator, choreographer and mentor, recognized Dean had a “full plate” of past and current lived experiences and that he needed an outlet. She came to acknowledge that dance would be that conduit for him. Before long she recognized that he also had innate choreographic gifts and that he wanted to express his “full plate” through that artform. He has always advocated for the need for wider acknowledgement and visibility for more diverse stories, aesthetics, access, inclusion and compassion within the performing arts. Chappie was pivotal in helping him channel his art towards expressions that would help emancipate himself from the darkest of childhoods.

Chappie reassured him that the dance pioneer Gertude Bodenwieser, after which the centre was named, was also a an artist with a lot on her mind and within her body that, as a survivor of the Holocaust, she felt ‘called’ to express through dance. ‘Demon Machine’ being one of her most noted works in this regard. Dean realized he was never going to be able to separate those three incredible years of dance training from his personal and community experiences – past, present or future. 

Time to leave:

2002 was a big year for Dean. It was also a major turning point for his dance and choreographic practices. Throughout the year, in between rehearsing and appearing as guest performer in Garry Stewart’s / Australian Dance Theatre’s premiere of The Age of Unbeauty, at the Adelaide International Festival, as well as a follow up of that performance at Sydney Opera House, he also created his largest solo production to date, Flesh: Memo. An 80-minute solo in two parts – unspeakABLE Acts and Maternal Tattoo – co-commissioned by the International Gay Games Cultural Festival and One Extra Co, who also produced it. Flesh: Memo’s eight-night season at the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, sold out and won Best Independent Production. Then he received news that he won the Robert Helpmann Scholarship!  

This scholarship led him to Europe to work (between March 2003 and March 2005) with several leading UK and European choreographers, including Lloyd Newson/DV8 and Paul Selwyn Norton/No Apology on the development, premiere and tour of two new works. During this time he briefly revisited Australia to continue developing his full-length group work, Back From Front, eventually presented at Performance Space, 2008.

Time for a sea change:

Returning to Australia in 2005 to premiere a new 45-minute solo work, Grounded On Air, at Performance Space, produced by One Extra Co, Dean felt a profound need for a change; one that involved a consolidation and realignment of his overall practice and content focus. He began this through a lengthy process of distillation and embellishment, across several years, of his most influential choreographic and performative practices (his own and others), as an artist approaching 40. 

Obsessed with all things marine, he started entertaining the idea of compiling a  movement / choreographic referencing system, one significantly influenced by subaquatic ecosystems and the technologies / techniques involved in SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). This being the beginnings of PrimeOrderly. Having attended several environmental and climate change lectures and symposiums in 2008 and 2009, he felt a move into more-than-human understandings fit very well with his interests to open up his overall dance, teaching and choreographic practice.

After several residencies at Critical Path in Sydney (national choreographic research centre), between 2006 and 2009, Dean successfully applied for one of the prestigious Australia Council (now Creative Australia) 2-year research fellowships. Between 2011 and 2012 he took a very deep dive into quite an unorthodox movement research. In this time he also devised 4 works: FATHOM as a ‘research launching performance’ at Performance Space for their ‘Uneasy Futures’ festival, iSell-fish for Critical Path’s annual SEAM Symposium (both in 2011), See AnEnemy for Fraser St Studios and a trio Under Pressure with Natalie Ayton and Kathryn Puie through FORM Dance Projects and performed at Lennox Theatre in Riverside Theatres, Parramatta (both in 2012). His fellowship was endorsed and supported by Critical Path, Performance Space, FORM Dance Projects and Macquarie University.   

His practice-led research in this area continued post fellowship, morphing his content base into research around ‘extended cognition’ theories and practices, and discovering new ways to communicate environmental concerns through embodied research practices. Between 2013 and 2021, he has devised and performed a further six viscerally immersive reflections on climate change concerns through a marine lens. They include: SubMarine in 2013 - a three-week community and schools outreach and performance program as part of the National Science Week, produced by Tasdance/Annie Grieg and supported by Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) and UTAS - (marine biologist Cynthia Awruch, Oceanic Geophysicist Mike Coffin) in Hobart. Plasti-Cities in 2014 was a 3-day X 8 hours a day performed installation as part of Performance Space’s annual Day For Night, Queer performance festival. Intruders 2014 was a trio presentation and lecdem at World Parks Congress (a once-a-decade gathering of global environmentalists, scientists, First Nations peoples, artists and other delegates). This was in collaboration with invasive species ecologist and ACIUCN (Australian Committee for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) member, Dr Judith Fisher. Threshold in 2016 at PACT Theatre in Sydney, Dying To Sea 2017 a short duet with Andrew Batt-Rawden at Critical Path as part of the annual Festival of Death and Dying and a 75-minute ‘solo’ Infinite Item in 2020, as a development of Threshold and presented online (international live streamed) during COVID lockdown 2020. Dean had an incredible team of collaborators all working hard to make that show, and the live-streaming of it, a beautiful (though epic) experience.  

Time for a major rethink:

In late 2015 and throughout 2016, Dean was diagnosed with autism by an Asperger’s syndrome (now known as autism Level 1) expert with 3 decades experience in the field. Whilst this definitely opened up clearer channels of understanding himself, it was also a huge and complex recognition of what he always knew – that he lived with disability. In 2017 he was also diagnosed with co-occurring ADHD by another professional.

However, a few years later, given the extreme nature of his childhood trauma and with the knowledge of potential cross-over of certain traits, he decided to get a more thorough re-diagnosis, and by a single clinical psychologist with even more experience in neurodivergence. Adriana has a more wholistic approach that also acknowledges intersectional influences on autistic people’s lives. Between 2020 and 2022 she reaffirmed the former diagnoses, this time being more specific to diagnosing Dean as Level 2 autistic/ADHD (AuDHD). The last 10 years have been an enormous and complex journey – personally and professionally – as Dean continues to realign his life within a more sustainable existence, and now with vital support through the NDIS program.

Time for a systemic shift:

In 2010 he commenced working, more directly, with various disability-inclusive arts and other community companies and agencies. Across the last decade he painstakingly formulated a workshop facilitation / creative agency methodology he calls, Found In Translation (FIT). There is more on this, here. In this community, Dean has worked with several leading disability-inclusive companies, including Restless Dance Theatre (Adelaide), Murmuration (Sydney) and was a key collaborator with the disability-led ensemble, RUCKUS – founded by the wonderful Alison Richardson. During the seven years with RUCKUS Dean led weekly movement and performance sessions. He choreographed / co-directed two major works, See In Me (2013) and Speed of Life (2016) – with RUCKUS touring to EPIC Arts in Kampot, Cambodia, collaborating with EPIC Encounters – an ensemble of D/deaf dancers.

Time to build a (kind)nest:

Dean is now the artistic director of his own ‘company’, Weird Nest, which he co-founded with Andrew Batt-Rawden in 2021, as a means to bring his 30+ years of eclectic professional practices into a more focused and supportive platform. Weird Nest gives Dean the opportunity to lead a small but vibrant company, one that encourages creative agency for all – within the arts and across several diverse communities and individuals. Weird Nest it is currently auspiced by Andrew’s not-for-profit company, Chronology Arts and may become its own entity in a few years.

Apart from producing the environmental works, Threshold 2018 fand Infinite Item 2020, Weird Nest also produced his 2 hour “performed archive” in collaboration with Andrew Batt-Rawden for East Sydney Community and Arts Centre (ESCAC) annual performance program 'The Flying Nun'. Called ‘Remote Control’ it was in association with UNSW, Sydney Uni, the State Library and Critical Path (the national choreographic research centre), as part of the Dancing Sydney: Mapping Movements : Performing Histories archival project. In 2021, assisted by Critical Path choreographic in Sydney, Dean developed Remote Control, renaming it Context Is Everything. The final stage development of this was due to premiere at Sydney Fringe Festival, however, the 4 months Sydney COVID lockdowns that year prevented the festival from going ahead.

Weird Nest also delivered a 2-year outreach program (2018 – 2019) in the regional town of Orange. That program, called Fresh Orange Juice, gave 10 children and young people living with disability the opportunity to express themselves through Dean’s Found In Translation practice methodology. Then, towards the end of 2019 Weird Nest commenced a similar program in North Bondi, Sydney. With considerable support through Waverley Council, Weird Nest was able to sure up an ongoing community group, now known as the Weird Nest Youth Group and the program is known as CAP (creative agency program). This group of between 8 and 11 children / young adults, who all live with neurodivergent disability, have maintained commitment to weekly terms-based Saturday workshops and 4 seasonal 2-day intensives.