Bio

EMMASAUNDERS DIRECTOR/CHOREGRAPHER/DANCER/EDUCATOR/CURATOR/PRODUCER

Emma Saunders is an award winning “formidable” (Realtime, 2010) Australian dance artist who works as a director, choreographer, dancer, educator, dance curator and producer. She graduated with a BA in Dance and Grad Dip Ed (Dance/Drama) from the University of Western Sydney (1996). Over the past 25 years she has honed her practice to develop an interest in the simplicity of dance and the complexity of choreography. Utilising a visceral, instinctive attack, her work is immediate, often working with humour, everyday movement, text, repetition, deconstruction, duration and abstraction. 

Recently she was shortlisted for two Australian Dance Awards. The first for ENCOUNTER (2020) - commissioned by FORM DANCE PROJECTS (Executive Producer, Annette McLernon) and presented by SYDNEY FESTIVAL. ENCOUNTER was a large scale outdoor full length site specific work of joy in Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta (tagged #bestofthefest by CREATE NSW) and for the Four Winds Festival, Bermagui. Directed by Emma Saunders, Encounter involved a 52 piece live orchestra (WSYO), 16 dancers – 8 dancers from Western Sydney and 8 dancers from Fling Physical Theatre, an original 1hr composition by composers Jodi Phyllis (The Clouds) and Amanda Brown (The Go-Betweens), Miles Franklin nominee writer Felicity Castagna, and slam poet Pola Fanous. Emma was also shortlisted for an Australian Dance Award for the Austinmer Dancing Project 1.1.18 – an en masse, outdoor site specific project exploring the intersection of where community, site and dance can intersect. This project has had over 15,000 hits on youtube and continues to remain an important part of the local cultural landscape as a moment where a sense of communal meaning was created through the experience of dancing together where we live. In 2015, Emma was also commissioned by SYDNEY FESTIVAL and Urban Theatre Projects where she created two other large scale outdoor site specific dance projects, The Bankstown Dancing Project, working with a cross section of the Vietnamese ballroom community and pop/musician Toby Martin (Youth Group). 

Emma co founded the award-winning Sydney based trio, The Fondue Set, alongside Jane McKernan and Elizabeth Ryan. The Fondue Set have created 8 full length works including Green Room Award-winning No Success Like Failure presented at the Sydney Opera House (2008) and Dance Massive, Arts House, Melbourne (2009), performed in the Melbourne International Arts Festival (The Bar, 2008), Sydney Festival First Night (The Hoofer, 2010), The Sideshow for ABCTV, The Studio (SOH), were representatives for Australia in the AJDX Japan/Australia Dance Exchange supported by the Australia Council and CREATE NSW. In 2008, they also received Australia Council funding to recontextualise their signature theatrical and humorous dance work within an international context travelling and performing in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Vienna with a residency in Paris, alongside Australian dance artist, Ros Crisp. 

In 2021, she co founded the WE ARE HERE Company with FORM Dance Projects, which has 10 diverse performers who have made 10 short solo digital portraits in collaboration with Feras Shaheen, ALL THAT I AM RIGHT NOW for Parramatta Laneways (2021), and EVERYBODY DANCE NOW, SOH forecourt (2021). Emma partnered with City People and Chris Fox Studios as the Dance Curator for Wanna Dance, a covid friendly public art/movement outdoor activation commissioned by City of Sydney, directed I’m Trying Not To Sweat The Small Stuff on Austinmer Dance Theatre, IPAC, Wollongong, and made Don’t Touch Me Or I’ll Cry for AMPA’s Bachelor of Dance students at NIDA. She also choreographed the award winning film clip FASHION MODEL ART (featuring Sofi Tukker) and their latest single BYE BYE for iconic Australian female music group, HAIKU HANDS in collaboration with Australian award winning female film Director, Jasmin Tarasin, and began development as choreographer for THE HEN HOUSE, a new exciting work with PYT, Fairfield. 

Outside of her work as an artist, Emma was also the inaugural Dance Curator at Campbelltown Arts Centre (2008 – 2012) under Lisa Havilah (now CEO, Powerhouse Museum), where she curated over 40 new dance projects that examine community, location, exchange, culture, age and the interdisciplinary nature of making dance work with a range of local, national and international artists and frameworks including the award winning dance/art exhibition What I Think About When I Think About Dancing, co curated with Lisa Havilah. As an educator, Emma taught Generative Performance Practice, Theatre Making and Movement at the University of Wollongong (2009- 2019) and now works part time as a Community Cultural Development worker in Cultural Development, Wollongong City Council developing a new exciting, community based project STANDING ON THE CEILING as part of the 2022 Cultural Program, based in Port Kembla and utilising a range of local choreographers, composers and MCs. Recently, Emma was the choreographic consultant for acclaimed site specific work SIRENS, by Merrigong Theatre Company, and directed by Anne Louise Rentell. 

In March 2022, Emma made RADICAL TRANSPARENCY, her first full length work in collaboration with the WE ARE HERE Company, presented by FORM Dance Projects at Parramatta Riverside Theatres. Emma was the recipient of a Critical Path bursary which contributed to the development of the work as part of March Dance supported by the City Of Sydney and the Keir Foundation. Recently in May 2022 Emma and the WE ARE HERE Company were invited to reconsider ENCOUNTER and presented ENCOUNTER SYDNEY as part of the Unwrapped Festival, presented by SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE with new text written by Felicity Castagna and words spoken by Warren Foster Jnr.