PACT hosts...Happy Hour Plus!

ReadyMade Works is excited to announce our new partnered performance platform initiative ‘PACT hosts…Happy Hour Plus!’

This new annual platform will be a version of our signature short works program, Happy Hour. Like the name suggests it comes with additions – a new venue, bigger stage space, more lights and technical capacity, more audience, but with the same commitment to showcasing great Sydney independent dance. Our inaugural ‘PACT hosts…Happy Hour Plus!’ features work by Lee Serle, Azzam Mohamed and Tra Mi Dinh and will take place at our partner venue, PACT centre for emerging artists in Erskineville on Friday 23 June and Saturday 24th June at 7pm.

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AZZAM MOHAMED

GLAD is an acronym for Gratitude, the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

AZZAM MOHAMED, also known as Shazam is a Sudanese dancer, and educator. Azzam’s dance practice encompasses a range of styles, from traditional cultural dance through to street dance and clubbing dance styles. Azzam’s dance practice involves teaching at studios and festivals, performing and touring in stage shows, competing in dance competitions and judging, organizing events, facilitating workshops, and mentoring and coaching current and emerging Hip Hop dancers. He won the House Dance Style Category of the City Sessions dance competition in Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl in February 2022, which was supported by Arts Centre Melbourne and Creative Victoria. later that year, he was invited to join the judging panel for Destructive Steps,
Australia's largest street dance festival. Azzam is equally active in the realm of live performance. Together with his crew Riddim Nation, he was invited to work on and perform in Nick Power's production of Two Crews, which had its world premieres in Sydney and Adelaide in 2020. Azzam co-created, choreographed, and performed in The Risk of Hyperbole, a collaborative multidisciplinary production directed by leading artist Jack Prest, in 2021. The work was commissioned by Phoenix Gallery, and supported by Create NSW and Australia Council for the Arts. He was also invited to perform as part of Monumental (Working Title) - A durational experimentation performance in 2022 and 2023 as part of Sydney Festival at The Art Gallery of NSW. Currently, Azzam sits on the board of Critical Path as an artist representative since 2021.

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LEE SERLE

Working Title choreographed and performed by Lee Serle

Film and sculpture by Mateo López 

Sound composition by Alidair Macindoe

Commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc. and The Substation, Melbourne

Working Title was Lee’s return to performing after nearly 2 years of Covid restrictions and was conceived during his Sustaining Practice Residency at ReadyMade Works. The re-establishment of his studio practice and return to dancing saw him retrace his steps in what began as a rather formal dance and structure, then the attempt to progress forward from this manifested physically as doubt and trepidation. For Working Title Lee also reconnected with Colombian visual artist Mateo López, a friend and collaborator of many years, to recycle and repurpose an existing work Esquina (Corner) first exhibited in Bogotá (2018) as a live performance. Mateo’s modular sculpture is an exact replica of the corner of his old Brooklyn apartment, and by fracturing and reconfiguring the projected image Lee questions the meaning of time and place which became so warped in the depths of the pandemic.

LEE SERLE graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance in 2003, and has presented his choreographic work to critical acclaim worldwide, creating dances on all scales, from grand stages to the intimate and personal, commissioned by the Lyon Opera Ballet (France), Sydney Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Inc, ACCA, The Substation, among many others. Lee has received fellowships from Australia Council for the Arts, City of Sydney and Rolex Arts Institute, and nominated for several Australian Dance and Greenroom Awards throughout his career. Lee is a highly valued educator having lectured and choreographed at tertiary institutions in Europe, USA and Australia, and is currently a trainer at NAISDA Dance College for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander developing artists in NSW.

Image Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti

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TRA MI DINH

Tra Mi Dinh presents “Not the piece” is a nod to the dismissed, forgotten, silly, or potentially perfect alternate ideas that get thrown around the rehearsal room. These fleeting mo(ve)ments are offered another life in a fresh context for practically the same purpose.

TRA MI DINH is a dancer and choreographer based across Sydney and Melbourne. As a dancer, she’s worked for companies’ Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move, Stephanie Lake Company, and Dance Makers Collective. Tra Mi has also worked with a range of incredible independent artists including Victoria Chiu, Lee Serle, Michelle Heaven, Nithya Nagarajan, Isabelle Beauvard, and Monica Bill Barnes & Company in works presented at AsiaTopa, MEL&NYC, Melbourne International Arts Festival, and Dance Massive. In 2019, her performance in Make your Own World by Lucy Guerin was recognised with a Green Room Nomination for Best Dancer in 2019. In 2022, Tra Mi won the 2022 Keir Choreographic Award for her work The ___. Dinh has developed her choreographic work through the support of residencies at Tasdance' On the Island Program, Sydney Fringe’s Art in Isolation, Critical Path, March Dance, DAIR, and DirtyFeet’s Out of the Studio program. She premiered her debut solo work HOLDING at March Dance in Sydney 2021, and more recently (UP)HOLDING at Brand X in January 2023. Tra Mi studied at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, graduating in 2014 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) and the Orloff Family Charitable Trust Scholarship for Most Outstanding Dancer.

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Happy Hour and Pact hosts Happy Hour Plus! are supported by City of Sydney and Create NSW.

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