INDance 2026

All INDance 2026 performances are now sold out!

INDance returns to the Neilson Studio in 2026 for its fifth year, presenting Emma Harrison’s High Octane, Jenni Large’s Wet Hard Long, Christopher Gurusamy’s 5 Arrows and Oli Mathiesen’s The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave.

Emma Harrison’s High Octane (“★★★★★” Stagedoor podcast), is a visceral exploration of ambition, success, class and hypermasculinity. Blending, rigorous physicality, music and early-2000s-inspired visuals with a powerhouse trio of performers, High Octane interrogates the price of success and the forces that shape our identities.

On the same night, see Jenni Large’s Wet Hard Long (“★★★★” The Age), where two dancers navigate exacting feats atop eight-inch heels, contending with obstacles and objects in a slippery endurance piece that challenges both performers and audiences. Wet Hard Long subverts narratives around sex, power, identity, and consent, delivering a provocative, jaw-clenching meditation on the demands and triumphs of the femme body.

In week two, we have 5 Arrows from Internationally acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer Christopher Gurusamy. 5 Arrows oscillates between lyrical Bharatanatyam and abstract embodied gestures. The work explores love, lust, and longing while critically reimagining how ancient forms can be recontextualised in Australia. Premiered to sold-out audiences in 2025, 5 Arrows celebrates Christopher’s lived history; a performance that bridges classical technique with contemporary expression and is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Finally, Oli Mathiesen’s award-winning work The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave (“★★★★” The Guardian), is an electrifying endurance-based performance exploring rave culture, techno music and the limits of the human body, with a soundtrack of  Suburban Knight’s booming Nocturbulous Behaviour album. Mathiesen recasts the nightclub as high art, blending chaos, physical rigour and cathartic spectacle.

Supported by the Neilson Foundation, INDance has become a recognised fixture in the national dance calendar — a celebration of artistic excellence, risk-taking and creative exploration. INDance continues to introduce audiences to original voices and ideas shaping the future of Australian choreography.

Week 1: 30 April – 2 May

Week 2: 7 – 9 May

Buy a 2-Performance or 4-Performance Package and Save

Hero image: Nat Cartney

Exploring success, capitalism, class, and material wealth, High Octane takes a visceral look at how these forces shape our identities and bodies. Hailing from Regional Queensland and New South Wales, Harrison alongside an epic line-up of performers and creatives, delves into the hypermasculine world of V8 racing, channeling her personal experiences into a provocative interrogation of ambition and its price.

With an explosive blend of movement, rev heads, burnouts, rhinestones, music, and early 2000s-inspired visuals, High Octane takes the stage by force. A raw and electrifying reflection on the forces that drive us, High Octane challenges audiences to reconsider their relationship with success, power, and the relentless pursuit of more.

“★★★★★ High Octane was an entirely unique rush, something that sticks with you long after all that’s left on the road is smoke and skid marks.” Stagedoor Podcast

“High Octane is an exhilarating ride – its raw energy, sharp wit and fearless performances make it a compelling new addition to Harrison’s body of work.” Dance Informa

“High Octane is a fierce growl howling into the world. It is a flare shot across the cracked asphalt of a country speeding headlong into an election promise wasteland where class struggle is re-badged, the cost of living is weaponised, and art is collateral damage.” Limelight

“High Octane revs in a way that’s sure to be unlike any show you’ve seen.” Cityhub

Performers / collaborators: Emma Riches and Frances Orlina.
Dramaturg: Adriane Daff
Sound designer: Amy Flannery
Lighting designer: Benjamin Brockman
Costume designer: Eliza Cooper
Outside eyes: Martin del Amo, Miranda Wheen

Emma is a choreographer, director and performer. Her multidisciplinary practice moves between dance, theatre, film and voice, blending humour with highly physical movement to create work that is both playful and rigorous. Shaped by her working-class and regional upbringing, Emma’s choreography examines the systems that shape us, questioning dominant narratives while drawing on both personal and collective experiences.

Her most recent choreographic works include High Octane, commissioned, and presented by Campbelltown Arts Centre (2025), Wolverine, which premiered at Sydney Festival (2024) following an international residency with Dance Makers Collective and South East Dance (UK),Top Dog, created for Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year 2 students (2025) and was choreographer and performer in Arlington by Enda Walsh, directed by Anna Houston.

Emma collaborates widely as a performer, co-devisor and outside eye. Since 2019, she has been part of the Artistic Directorate of Dance Makers Collective. Performance highlights include Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky (dir. Rachael Swain, chor. Dalisa Pigram and Serge Aimé Coulibaly), All In (Dance Makers Collective, dir. Miranda Wheen, Sydney Festival 2025), Cue Lab (Emma Riches), Tra Mi Dinh’s (UP)HOLDING and The Lost Boys, (Little Eggs Collective, dir. Craig Baldwin and Eliza Scott).

She has been supported through residencies with South East Dance (UK), March Dance Festival, DirtyFeet, Ausdance, Tantrum Youth Arts, STRUT Dance WA and in 2025, Emma was a recipient of the ATLAS scholarship at ImPulsTanz Vienna.

This work was commissioned and produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre through Campbelltown City Council.
Campbelltown Arts Centre is a cultural facility of Campbelltown City Council and is assisted by the NSW Government through Create NSW. Campbelltown Arts Centre also receives support from the Neilson Foundation.

Images by Nat Cartney

Bending innuendo and oozing feminine resilience a-top 8-inch heels.

Wet Hard Long exhibits the enduring femme body under scrutiny of a patriarchal society.

Edging the audience towards the promise of relief, two dancers undertake exacting physical feats. Their bodies contend with obstacles, objects and elements – each, more impossible than the last.

Extended from Jenni Large’s 2022 KCA audience prize-winning work (Wet Hard), Wet Hard Long is an epic display of grit, glamour, and glistening jaw-clenching stamina. A slippery endurance piece demanding perseverance from performers and viewers in a tribute to the strenuous expectations which femme bodies continue to overcome.

Subverting narratives around sex and power, performing perfection, and avoiding failure, Wet Hard Long provokes questions about identity, desire, ownership, consent and the holy and arduous qualities of the feminine.

“★★★★★ In over a decade of reviewing, this is the best dance performance I have ever seen.” ArtsHub

“★★★★ Jenni Large has created a darkly ironic work filled with extraordinary strength, stamina and technical skill… Striking images of subservience and humiliation… visual references to waterspouts and bondage… all Of it is done with absolute alien calm. Wet Hard Long is a seriously impressive show… creepy and glamorous and exciting… ” The Age

“An evocative and ground breaking contemporary dance piece that seamlessly marries athleticism, artistry, and innovation. (The production) captivated the audience with its breath taking choreography, ingenious use of props, and meticulously crafted production elements.” Dance Life Magazine

Director, Choreographer & Performer: Jenni Large
Collaborating performer: Amber McCartney
Sound designer: Anna Whitaker
Lighting designer and Production Manager: Adelaide Harney
Sculptural fabricator: Jemima Lucas
Costume designer: Michelle Boyde
Dramaturgy: Ashleigh Musk
Research Assistant/Curator: P. Eldridge

Jenni is an independent dancer, teacher, and award-winning choreographer/director based in Kanamaluka/Launceston, Lutruwita/Tasmania.

Driven by the personal, political, and transformative forces of embodiment, Jenni’s multi-limbed practice spans 15 years of dynamic experiences in independent and company environments across Australia. As a dancer, she has performed extensively throughout metropolitan, regional and remote Australia as well as Europe, the UK, NZ, the Americas, Japan and Singapore with artists and companies including Dancenorth, Tasdance, Dance Nucleus, Legs On The Wall, GUTS Dance, SA Opera/Leigh Warren, Ashleigh Musk and Pat Toh Ling.

Heavily influenced by aesthetics and cinematic tropes, Jenni’s choreographic work is both flamboyant and controlled, thematically analysing patriarchal systems, celebrating women and exposing societal assumptions of stigmatised subjects. She has presented her work both as an independent artist and through commissions across Australia at festivals and institutions, including Mona Foma, Ten Days On The Island, Ohm Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse, Dancehouse, Carriage Works, Desert Festival, ADT: Raw, Sound + Fury, Sydney Dance Company (New Breed & PPY), WAAPA, Stompin, Australasian Dance Collective, Tasdance plus Cont.act Festival and Vector #5 in Singapore.

In 2022, Jenni won the Keir Choreographic People’s Choice Award for her work ‘Wet Hard’, which she then extended into ‘Wet Hard Long’, receiving a Green Room nomination for Most Outstanding Visual Design, premiering at Dancehouse in 2024 and then at The Arts Centre through The Australian Ballet’s DanceX in 2025. Jenni has been honoured to receive a Chloe Munro Fellowship through Lucy Guerin Inc. and is one of ten artists showcasing with TMAG’s biennial exhibition, Hobart: Current, opening in November this year.

Previous development and presentations of Wet Hard Long were been supported by Chloe Munro Fellowship through The Australian Cultural Fund, Creative Australia, Dancehouse and The Australian Ballet’s DanceX Program.

Images by Gianna Rizzo

5 Arrows fuses Bharathanatyam with Christopher’s biracial queer perspective, recontextualising and creating a dance work that speaks of love, lust and longing.

Based on ‘Mohamana’, an iconic Carnatic (South Indian) art music piece that comes from Bharathanatyam’s rich history, Christopher plays with the structure of the composition – using himself and his lived history to fill the cracks.

Oscillating between lyrical dance and abstract embodied movement of face, body and gesture, woven together with Christopher’s contemporary sensibilities, the work is equally based on ancient philosophy as it is the lyrics of pop music.

Christopher critically questions his practice in Bharathanatyam, asking how he can create and re-contextualise compositions from the rich history of dance in a meaningful way using himself as the catalyst to create a future for this form in Australia. This is not a work of finding oneself, it is a celebration of what has been found.

Choreographer & Performer: Christopher Gurusamy
Vocal: Arjunan Puveendran
Nattuvangam: Ranjeev Kirupairajah
Veena: Saumya Sritharan
Mridangam: Lojen Wijeyamanoharan

Christopher Gurusamy is an internationally acclaimed Bharathanatyam dancer and choreographer, regarded as a trailblazer of his generation. Born in Perth, at 18 he moved to Chennai in 2005 to study at the globally renowned Bharathanatyam conservatorium Kalakshetra. After graduation, Christopher was a principal dancer with Leela Samson’s Spanda Dance Company and has since carved a niche for himself as a soloist.

Since Christopher’s return to Australia in 2022, his work Ānanda: Dance of Joy (2024) presented at Eternity Playhouse (Sydney), DanceHouse (Melbourne) and Ambani Centre (Mumbai) received critical acclaim including a 4-star review in The Age, and was nominated for the Green Room Awards in the Outstanding Performer category. Christopher was also selected for DanceHouse’s 2024 Independent Choreographers Program. He was also creative consultant on acclaimed play Nayika: A Dancing Girl (Belvoir St Theatre, 2024).

In 2025, Christopher’s work included a sold-out premiere season of 5 Arrows, a Creative Australia commission for new work ‘Thee’ based on 20th century Tamil poetry; presentation for ACMI Nights; and performing for the Green Room Awards. He was the inaugural recipient of Australian Dance Theatre’s Expound Residency, where he undertook a development of ‘Kalki’, a contemporary dance work in collaboration with Miles Franklin Award winning novelist Shankari Chandran. He recently presented a full-length recital Ullam in Melbourne.

Christopher is globally recognised for the rigour of his performative practice, and ability to connect with diverse audiences especially those familiar and unfamiliar with his chosen dance form.

Images by Gracie Steindl

Initial support from DanceHouse Melbourne. CAAP – Longhouse presentation – 27 November 2024, Utp – performance season – 12-13 April 2025 supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Neilson Foundation.

From Aotearoa New Zealand, Oli Mathiesen with Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer present the award-winning The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave, an endurance-based dance work to the booming techno album Nocturbulous Behaviour by Suburban Knight.

Exploring the movement vocabulary used in techno and rave culture, a contemporary nightclub between 3 bodies emerges. Relentless movement, seamless without pause, detailed down to every beat.

The atmosphere and culture of a 3-day rave condensed into a high art, streamlined performance where you watch the destruction of 3 human beings commence in front of you.

Indulge in the pain, the sweat, the cathartic mess; a display of pure endurance to achieve a goal. A spectacle of the human body as a victim to music, as a victim to passion, as a victim to our endless desire to achieve more. To win and win again.

“★★★★ A shatteringly powerful show” The Guardian

“★★★★★ Viewed simply as a feat of memory, the dancing is astonishing. There must be two or three moves or poses per second. It’s like firing a machine gun for an hour and remembering the name of every bullet” Broadway Baby 

“★★★★ This is dance theatre as pure ecstasy” The Scotsman 

Creator, Choreographer, and Performer: Oli Mathiesen (Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi)
Choreographer and Performer: Lucy Lynch (Ngāti Kahungunu)
Choreographer and Performer: Sharvon Mortimer (Ngāti Porou)
Creative Producer: Abbie Rogers (Kāi Tahu, Te Arawa)
Music: Suburban Knight
Lead Lighting Designer and Operator: Shanell Bielawa (Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi)
Stage Manager: Gina Heidekruger
Performer (2025): Celia Hext
Performer (2025): Tayla Gartner
Lighting Design Collaborators: Oli Mathiesen, Shanell Bielawa, Bekky Boyce, Jazmin Whittall, Jacobus Engelbrecht (Legit Events)