Inspiring dance workshop at Sydney Dance Company

Please find here video footage captured during the 2024 TLF Inspiring Dance Workshops, gratefully supported by the Tanja Liedtke Endowment / Perpetual Ltd. These workshops provided our Pre-Professional Year dancers with an incredibly rich experience, engaging in movement research with James Batchelor and exploring repertoire and task-based creation with Kristina Chan.

We began the week by coming together to view Life in Movement, a powerful and grounding moment for the students, that honours Tanja’s life and artistic legacy, setting the tone for thoughtful exploration for the week.

Also included are unedited videos of James describing his workshop process.

While the intention was to refine these videos for presentation, they remain in raw form. Madeline Harms (cc’d) will be overseeing this year’s workshops and documentation, and we look forward to sharing this experience with you and the Foundation a little more formally.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to continue our collaboration with James Batchelor and his company on Resonance, an exploration of lineages in contemporary dance history and embodied memory through the lens of three generations of Australian dancers. The project draws on the lived experiences of Tanja Liedtke’s close collaborators, Kristina Chan, Anton, and Amelia McQueen, who will also perform in the work. It evolves through the transmission of knowledge and movement to James, his dancers Chloe Chignell and Leah Marojevic, and our Pre-Professional Year students. Emerging from Tanja’s archive, Resonance traces the ongoing impact of her story on contemporary Australian dance. The resulting new work will premiere at Sydney Dance Company’s home in late September 2025.

On behalf of our Head of Philanthropy, Katharine Seymour (cc’d), and myself, as well as everyone involved, thank you once again for your generous and ongoing support. The Foundation’s commitment to inspiring new generations of artists ensures that Tanja’s legacy continues to resonate, provoke, and move.