Dean Walsh

Dean is an award-winning Australian professional contemporary dance and performance practitioner, educator, movement researcher, writer, arts access advocate and marine environmental activist.

Stemming from a more impoverished background (including more than economic meanings of “impoverished”), most of his performance works (solo and group) have wrestled and conveyed some of life’s more “wicked problems” - domestic violence and its inter-generational influences, childhood sexual abuse/rape, queer/homophobic violence (domestic and societal) and the communal / personal affects of HIV / AIDS.

Between 2011 and 2012 Dean was awarded and undertook extensive movement research during an Australia Council for the Arts Choreographic Fellowship. This moved his content interest base into research of ‘extended cognition’ theories and practices, discovering new ways to communicate Climate Change awareness through embodied research into marine ecosystems.

His practice began morphing and, eventually, embedded within environmental awareness-raising interests (via productions, in general educational contexts and through his ongoing research in this area), thus offering a wider context to the notions of abuse and inter-generational consequences - those of an environmental and inter-species nature.

In 2009 he commenced working with various disability-inclusive arts companies and organisations and, in tandem to his marine environmental studies, he has delved deeply into working in many diverse arts access capacities. Throughout his career as an artist, Dean has held a strong interest in wider community engagement through the performing arts. He has facilitated many workshops in these spaces across Sydney, Australia, in NYC, Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Matsuyama, Japan.

Across the last decade he has slowly formulated a teaching/workshop facilitation methodology of “dynamic inclusion” he calls, Found In Translation (FIT). There is more on this here

Dean’s prior works and wider community outreach-engaging capacities were very much trauma influenced. In 2015 he was, finally, diagnosed as also being on the autism spectrum (higher functioning). This opened up channels of finding out more about his selfhood, assisting in deepening his understanding of how his Complex Trauma and neurodivergency (Autism and ADHD), interplay and create significant disabling moments in his day to day life. As such, he now identifies as living with invisible disability.

In terms of his 30 year career in the performing arts, Dean has been at the forefront of many major shifts within the Australian arts and cultural landscape. He has crossed over several sectors within the arts, now including environmental science communities. He is an avid scuba and free diver and draws much of his movement research findings from these practices. He has formulated a movement research practice he refers to as PrimeOrderly. You can read more about that here.

In March 2020 Dean and his life partner, composer and performer, Andrew Batt-Rawden, were about to launch a 2 year program of activity - and then COVID arrived on the global scene and the program fell to pieces. It has been quite the ride since! Suddenly all their activities and performance projects either completely folded or were put on hold, indefinitely. Their weekly youth with disability Creative Agency Program (CAP) crossed over to being online - less than ideal. However, 2022 is slowly looking a little more promising…

In 2022 Weird Nest embark upon a development of a new work with their CAP group in North Bondi. This work is called True To Nature (working title). Bondi Festival have granted the group a one week residency in the newly refurbished Bondi Pavilion. Weird Nest have also been successful in receiving two grants from Waverley Council for this wonderful group of kids. True To Nature looks set to premiere at Bondi Festival of the Arts in July 2023.

Between 2011 and 2021 Dean has made 9 productions conveying viscerally immersive understandings of Climate Change through a marine environmental lens. These works are: FATHOM (2011), iSellFish (2011), Under Pressure (2012), SubMARINE (2013), PlastiCities (2014), INTRUDERS (2014), Threshold NRC (2016), Dying To Sea (2017), Infinite Item (online - live streamed 2020 and 2021).

All these were commissioned and programmed by: Performance Space Sydney, Critical Path - a major national choreographic research centre, Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) - (marine biologist Cynthia Awruch, Oceanic Geophysicist Mike Coffin) in Hobart, Tasmania and co-produced in association with Tasdance (Annie Grieg) and the National Science Week, FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres Parrmatta, Life Rites, PACT Theatre in Sydney, the World Parks Congress (a once-a-decade global gathering of thousands of environmentalists, scientists, First Nations peoples, artists and other communicators) - within this context Dean presented a 20-minute talk and a 30 minute performed lecture demonstration in collaboration with invasive species ecologist, Judith Fisher.

In November 2018 he produced a 2 hour solo “performend archive” for East Sydney Community and Arts Centre (ESCAC) annual performance program 'The Flying Nun'. This piece was called ‘Remote Control’ and was in association with UNSW, Sydney Uni, the State Library and Critical Path (the national choreographic research centre). It is part of the Dancing Sydney: Mapping Movements : Performing Histories project.

In 2021, assisted by Critical Path choreographic research centre in Sydney, Dean developed Remote Control and renamed it Context Is Everything. The final stage development of this will premiere at this years’ Sydney Fringe Festival in September.

Since 2010 Dean has worked with several leading disability-inclusive companies, including Restless Dance Theatre (Adelaide), Murmuration (Sydney) and was a key collaborator with the famed disability-led performance ensemble, RUCKUS. During the 7 years with RUCKUS Dean led weekly movement sessions and choreographed / co-directed two major works, See In Me (2013) and Speed of Life (2016). As part of that latter production, RUCKUS toured to Epic Arts Centre in Kampot, Cambodia to work with EPIC Encounters dance ensemble.

Since 1991, many of his works have toured nationally and/or internationally. In tandem with his extensive solo career, he has worked for companies; ADT (Adelaide), Stalker Theatre (Sydney, as choreographer + performer), Sydney Dance Company (teacher and lecturere for their pre-professional year program), Sydney Theatre Company (choreographer), DV8 Physical Theatre (London) & No Apology (Amsterdam) - both made possible through his being awarded the coveted Sir Robert Helpmann Scholarship 2002 - among many other reputable project-based Australian companies.