David Pledger works as a director, producer, designer, writer, choreographer and dramaturg in theatre, dance, opera, television and media arts. He has gained wide acclaim for building new artworks that combine physical languages, video, sound and special effects into an organic system in which media are elevated from their existing role and integrated into the structure and theme of the artwork. He is the founding artistic director of not yet it's difficult (NYID). At Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Pledger's work on multimedia theatre and the development of international collaborations was the starting point for long-term discussions for exchange.

Supported by the Australia Council

Zheng-Ting Wang is a composer and master performer of the sheng (Chinese mouth organ). He graduated from Shanghai Music Conservatory, received a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Melbourne and is an honorary research associate at Monash University. He is the founding member and director of the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble and has been active in collaborations with non-Chinese musicians to create Australian cross-cultural music. Zheng-Ting Wang's residency at Tianjin Conservatory enabled him to work with professors and master musicians, develop contacts with festivals, radio stations and arts agencies, and to lecture on Chinese migration musical culture in Australia.

Supported by the Australia Council

What's been described as "a trumpet player trapped in a two dimensional universe" is in fact the highly unique audio works of Lucas Abela, a maverick musician who has a fascination with playing sheets of broken glass. By pressing his face against the glass and employing a range of vocal techniques he creates a variety of noises that are simultaneously cacophonous and musical. Although principally a solo performer, Abela used his time with Sub Jam Production in Beijing to form a band with local musicians, and record and release an album before touring the new act around Asia.
http://dualplover.com/justice.htm
http://myspace.com/justiceyeldham

Supported by the Australia Council.

Since graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium, Willow Neilson has taken his band to win third place at the Jazz Hoelaart International Competition in Brussels and has also won third place as a soloist in both the Montreaux and London jazz festival saxophone competitions. Between 2003 and 2004 Neilson performed regularly as part of the Shanghai jazz scene alongside Chinese and international musicians. His residency will enable him to deepen his ties in through collaborating with artists associated with the JZ club and school in Shanghai. (Supported by the Australia-China Council)

Since graduating from Rusden College majoring in dance and drama, Sandra Parker has pursued a career as a choreographer, performer, teacher and director. She has worked as a freelance artist, as Artistic Director of the iconic Australian company Dance Works, and now as the Director/Choreographer of Sandra Parker Dance. Parker's work has been presented in Europe and the US and she has received a Centenary Medal for Services to Australian Dance. Parker will have the opportunity to work with two of China’s best contemporary dance companies LTDX-Beijing and Guangdong Modern Dance Company to create a new dance work. (Supported by the Australia Council)

Composer and media artist Robert Iolini accepts music, image and sound on equal terms. His works are detailed poetic narratives, stylistically diverse, and united by a philosophical approach. Iolini’s commissions include major works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, Danish National Radio, Netherlands Program Service and Big hArt Inc. Iolini will be based with ACO Art and Culture Outreach, a non-profit organisation facilitating cultural exchange between foreign artists, local artists and audiences. As artist in residence he will produce a video art work focusing on Hong Kong 10 years after its reunification with China. (Supported by the Australia Council) 

Theatre director, writer, dramaturge and actor trainer Robert Draffin was invited by the esteemed theatre director Professor Gu Yian to be artist in residence at the Shanghai International Performing Arts Research Centre.  Draffin conducted a series of intensive acting workshops, created a performance of Antigone using a classical poetic text, and undertook a field study with Gu Yian.  He also reconnected with artists he had worked with previously. Draffin has since been invited to present one of his company’s works for the Shanghai International Experimental Theatre Festival in 2007 and run a workshop program in Hong Kong with On & On Theatre.

Funded by the Australia Council.

Musician Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specialising in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all of his own. Active in improvised and notated musical traditions, Griswold performs as a soloist, in Clocked Out Duo and collaborates with musicians and multidisciplinary artists. He has composed new works for performers such as Margaret Leng Tan, Steven Schick, and Anthony Burr, exploring the possibilities of miniature music boxes, found object and percussion. Griswold holds a PhD from the University of California, San Diego and has previously studied Chinese traditional and folk music in Sichuan Province. Through his residency with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music he hopes to expand his knowledge and skills in Sichuan Opera percussion and Jinqian Ban and collaborate with composer Zou Xiangping on a new production for the Queensland Music Festival.

Supported by Arts Qld and the Australia Council.

Independent dance artist Sete Tele has performed with various dance companies including Skadada, Company Loaded, Australian Dancers’ Company, Fieldworks Performance Group, ID339 Dance Group and 2 Dance Plus.  In China he undertook a choreographic residency with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, teaching classes and workshops and creating a new choreographic work City of Fall, accompanied by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra.  Tele has since been invited back to work with the company in 2006.

Funded by Arts WA and the Australia Council.

Tim Humphrey is a brass musician, specialising in developing integrated musical settings which involve live musical performance for dance and theatre.  In China, Humphries worked with students from the trumpet department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and presented his collaborative work Full Moon/Trance-migration with Australian artists Tony Yap and Madeleine Flynn.  He participated in the International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Society for Ethno-musicology, meeting with a variety of music professionals from around China, and around the Asia-Pacific region, and presenting a paper Contemporary Music for Ancient Dance: Ethno/musicological? that reflects his experience of cultural collaborations with Chinese, Timorese and Vietnamese communities in Australia.  He has since submitted an abstract to the Electroacoustic Music Seminar 06 in Beijing.

Funded by Arts Victoria, Australia-China Council and the Australia Council.

Performer Melissa Madden Gray and her French alter ego ŒMeow-Meow have wrought cross-genre havoc to contemporary opera, improvised 'new music' and cabaret, created choreography for music/dance theatre and gone solo for multimedia performances. Madden Gray undertook her residency with internationally renowned transsexual performer Jin Xing and her Dance Theatre in Shanghai.  Together they created a two-woman dance-music-theatre piece The Day Doesn't Understand Why the Night is So Dark which they aim to present at the new Shanghai international dance festival - Shanghai Dance in 2007. Whilst in China Madden Gray also worked on a number of solo and collaborative dance/music/video pieces for, amongst others, the Time Based Arts Festival in Portland, Oregon, and the Adelaide Festival 06.   

Funded by the Australia Council.

Choreographer/performer Michael Whaites has choreographed for companies such as Australian Dance Theatre, Leigh Warren and Dancers, One Extra Dance Company and Restless Dance.  In China Whaites worked with the Beijing Modern Dance Academy to hone his improvisation skills. He also travelled to Guangzhou where he worked with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and was invited to teach at a university in Hangzhou.  As a result of the residency Whaites was invited back to China to create a new choreographic work Blow Up with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in 2005.

Funded by the Arts NSW and the Australia Council.

At the time of the residency Frances D’Ath was choreographer for zeroballet, which produced the short dance film shadetreemechanic with film-maker Paul Williams in July 2001. D'Ath worked as choreographer-in-residence with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in Guangzhou, China. In collaboration with the Company and Australian lighting designer, John Dutton, d’Ath choreographed <carnivore> for the Company's 10th Anniversary Celebrations in June 2002.This innovative work has generated international interest in his work. In 2003 D’Ath will return to China to work and teach with the Beijing Academy and the GMDC and to work as a sound engineer for the National Day celebrations held in Nanhai City, Guangzhou.

Funded by Arts Victoria and the Australia China Council.

Vanessa Tomlinson, percussionist, is a solo interpreter of new music, an orchestral musician, a chamber musician, an educator and an improviser who has performed and lectured in Australia and internationally. During her residency, Tomlinson worked with the Sichuan University Department of Music, teaching and collaborating on a series of new compositions. She also studied Sichuan Opera Percussion, Mandarin and leaned about a variety of folk traditions. The collaboration, Electric Mahjong, was performed in Chengu and also as part of Drums in the Outback Festival and the Totally Huge New Music Festival, WA.  Since returning from China, Tomlinson has created a large scale work with 12 percussionists from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. 

Funded by the Australia China Council and the Australia Council.

Phillip Adams is a dancer/choreographer who founded Balletlab, recognised as one of Australia's most experimental and challenging contemporary dance companies. During his residency Adams worked with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and was joined for some of that time by musician and collaborator, Lynton Carr. The residency produced a new work, Flower Killing introducing a new working style and choreographic vocabulary to the Company. The Guangdong Modern Dance Company will tour Flower Killing through China and to Indonesia and the Asia Pacific Arts Festival in Berlin. Adams was invited to return in 2002 to create another work for the Company. Balletlab, has also been invited to perform at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in July 2002.    

Funded by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council.

Shen Pan Geng was born in Suzhou, China and started learning erhu (Chinese violin) at the age of 18. He arrived in Australia in 1989 and has been the Musical Director and Conductor of the Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School (PEGS) Chinese Orchestra since 1991. During his residency at Music Dept of Nanjing Normal University, Shen developed his repertoire and techniques as a professional erhu soloist, built up a collection of new pieces for the PEGS Chinese Orchestra and learnt various skills in Chinese instrumental repair. Shen returned to China in September 2000 for a recital with the Nanjing Normal University Chinese Orchestra and the Nanjing City Chinese Orchestra.

Funded by The Australia China Council and the Australia Council.

Maggi Sietsma is the Artistic Director of the highly acclaimed Expressions Dance Company in Brisbane and has previously worked with the Australian Ballet, London Festival Ballet and Theatre du Chene Noir in France. Under her direction, Expressions has toured extensively throughout Australia, the USA, Germany, PNG, India, UK, Israel, Singapore and Taiwan, and in 1997 the Company won the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. During her residency Sietsma spent six weeks in Beijing to help develop a program of contemporary dance, dance composition and giving seminars on modern dance in Australia for the Beijing Dance Academy and the Beijing Modern Dance Company.

Funded by the Australia Council.

At the time of his residency Zheng-Ting Wang was director of the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble. He has experimented extensively with the integration of Chinese and Western music and has performed with senior musicians and major Symphony Orchestras in Australia and the USA, where he is a regular lecturer and performer of the sheng, a Chinese mouth organ. On his residency Wang worked with sheng master, Hu Tian-Qian and the Frontiers Chinese Orchestra and was priviledged to spend time with Wang Junhua, ‘Sheng Wang’ (King of the sheng makers). Wang also lectured on music education in China and Australia and spent a few days in Malaysia pursuing sheng education.

Funded by the Australia Council and the Australia China Council.

Xiao-Xiong Zhang was born in Cambodia in 1958 , moving to China in 1971 before emigrating to Australia in 1983.  A graduate of the Centre for Performing Arts, Adelaide, he has danced with One Extra Dance Company, Australian Dance Theatre, Vis-a-Vis Dance and Green Mill Dance Project, and has won awards for both his dance performance and his choreography.. During his residency Xiao-Xiong worked with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and the Beijing Modern Dance Company, coordinating an ongoing exchange between Beijing dancers and students from the Centre of Performing Arts in Adelaide. 

Funded by the Australia Council, the Australia China Council and Arts South Australia.

Lenny Kovner is an actor/writer/director whose residency at the Shanghai Theatre Academy enabled him to work with students on the Mandarin translation of the Australian play No Worries by David Holman. The play received two public performances, with capacity audiences comprising Academy staff, foreign guests and Consular officials from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Vietnam.

Funded by the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts.