Brand X Residency: Olenka Toroshenko showing, 'i am root'

Photo: Lauren Connelly (LALA Photography)

Public showing

When: Friday, September 2, and Saturday, September 3, 8pm

Where: The Flying Nun by Brand X, 34-40 Burton St, Darlinghurst

Cost: $25

Accessibility: If you have access requirements for attending the show, please tick the access requirements box during the booking process. This includes booking companion card tickets. A Brand X team member will then be in touch to ensure we understand your requirements.

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As part of the Spotlight / Brand X Residency, 2022 recipient Olenka Toroshenko flew to Sydney to further develop and perform her work i am root as part of Brand X’s Flying Nun Program.

The aim of this residency is to develop national pathways for artists to further develop and present their work interstate along with networking opportunities provided in partnership with Brand X in Sydney.

The residency began at The Mill for 2 weeks earlier in the year, followed by a 1-week residency and performance season at Brand X’s The Flying Nun program. Olenka’s performances will occur on September 2 and 3.

We look forward to reporting on the outcomes from this wonderful development presentation and touring opportunity that is built to empower and support South Australian makers!

• About the artist

  Olenka Natalia Toroshenko is a Ukrainian Canadian artist, writer and producer whose life is in service to a saner, meaningful existence. She is a multidisciplinary performer whose mediums include spoken word poetry, dance, clowning, song, storytelling and ritual performance art. 

  She is a Katonah yoga teacher, student of The Orphan Wisdom School and lover of coniferous forests. She has worked in news broadcasting and politics which helped shape her understanding of the current cultural paradigm. She was the co-producer of “wild”, “Shakti Showcase” and “Shakti Rising” multi-artist/disciplinary productions and has toured 4 different continents as a singer, poet and dancer.

  She enjoys producing video projects, Burning Man theme camps, and multidisciplinary shows. She is inspired by collaborating with other artists.

  Olenka currently resides in South Australia.

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Breakout Residencies: Olenka Toroshenko showing, 'I am Root'

Photo: Lauren Connelly (LALA Photography).

Public showing

When: Friday, June 10, 6pm

Where: The Mill Breakout, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta

Duration: 1 hour (including casual Q&A)

Cost: $10 (+ booking fee)

• Accessibility

  Disability access is available via our Angas St entrance, and a disability toilet is also available. View our accessibility information page.

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You are invited to the work-in-progress showing of I am Root, a ritual performance piece by Olenka Toroshenko.

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Most of us are transplants. Uprooted from one country and resettled, making home in another's. Do you remember where you came from? What happens when culture, language and ancestry are left behind?

Seed. Water. Root. Grow. Harvest. Eat. Die. Decompose. Repeat.

Told from the perspective of a Ukrainian Canadian living in Australia, this ritual performance piece wonders how one might question, create and nourish culture in a globalised, colonised world. Olenka enlists her mother tongue (Ukrainian) and the mediums of song, dance, folk traditions and recipes, story, poetry and prayer to enliven the depths of the unspoken, mysterious places where spirit lives...if we're willing to cultivate it.

We are future roots.

The showing with be followed by a short Q&A with Olenka, presented by The Mill CEO / Artistic Director Katrina Lazaroff & Associate Producer Louie Dempsey. Audiences will have the opportunity to ask questions about the development and provide feedback about the performance.

• About the artist

  Olenka Natalia Toroshenko is a Ukrainian Canadian artist, writer and producer whose life is in service to a saner, meaningful existence. She is a multidisciplinary performer whose mediums include spoken word poetry, dance, clowning, song, storytelling and ritual performance art. 

  She is a Katonah yoga teacher, student of The Orphan Wisdom School and lover of coniferous forests. She has worked in news broadcasting and politics which helped shape her understanding of the current cultural paradigm. She was the co-producer of “wild”, “Shakti Showcase” and “Shakti Rising” multi-artist/disciplinary productions and has toured 4 different continents as a singer, poet and dancer.

  She enjoys producing video projects, Burning Man theme camps, and multidisciplinary shows. She is inspired by collaborating with other artists.

  Olenka currently resides in South Australia.

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This residency is presented in partnership with Brand X, Sydney, supported by Arts South Australia. 

Breakout Residencies 2022: Announcing the successful recipients

Brink Residency: Samuel Lau

Photo: Jamie Hornsby.

Walk of the Ancestors is a project that explores how Eastern philosophy and values, such as filial piety and ancestor veneration have manifested and directed my life as a second-generation Chinese-Australian. 

I was driven to explore this as much of my journey as an emerging artist has been navigating and reconciling my place as an artist of colour, specifically, as an Asian-Australian. I have spent much of 2021 investigating what it means juggling a hyphenated identity in present day Australia with my group of collaborators - Cyrus Kung, Dan Phan, Steph Teh, Alice Yang and Jazmine Deng.

Family and filial piety have become a central theme for us in our investigations. However, though I feel I have somewhat reconciled a place in the present with my immediate family, I have had little opportunity to do so with extended and older generations of my family. This is in part due to all my extended family living overseas and also I have come to an age where all my Grandparents have passed. For me personally, filial piety has such power over me that - although never explicit - there is a great yearning in me to explore, reconcile and, perhaps in some respect, 'redeem' a relationship with my grandparents/ancestors that I never had. This is also fuelled by the fact that my Grandmother on my Father's side had ran out on my Dad's family when he was 2 years old. There are only inklings of what she had done, what kind of life she had before she returned to my Dad again on her deathbed in 2010. Perhaps in investigating this, I can both reconcile in myself my family's generational story and also my Grandmother's lost life. Because of the scarce nature and sources of my Grandmother's life after she ran away, I envision a blending of fiction and non-fictional storytelling of her life. This in part for storytelling purposes but also for me, its a way to honour her life; though it may be fictional, it is how I can remember her by.

About the artist:

Sam Lau is an Adelaide-based Actor and Musician. With cultural roots in Hong-Kong, Sam is a second-generation Chinese-Australian. A 2019 graduate of the Adelaide College of Arts Acting Program, he has since worked in a variety of mediums such as ABC’s TV series Aftertaste, Anifex studio’s animation film The Better Angels and Too Dumb Blonde’s productions of Does it Please You? which was the recipient of the 2021 Holden Street Theatre Award. 

Sam is a frequent collaborator with ActNow Theatre, and has also worked with companies and organisations such as OzAsia (SA), London Artists Projects (UK), CARCLEW (SA), Perform!Education (VIC), Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (NSW), and Echelon Productions (VIC). 

Sam is also an accomplished musician, classically trained in piano and trombone. Combining his musicianship with the theatre, he often acts and performs music in productions such as playing trombone in the musical Darlinghurst Nights directed by Michael Hill, piano in ROAD directed by Chris Drummond and has composed & performed original music in Daily Rice’s production of Between Our Stories.

Sam often explores themes of diaspora in his writing and works, such as through his 2021 MakeSpace Artist Residency where he dove into the cultural identity of being in-between cultures; investigating his lifelong navigation of liminal spaces both culturally and spiritually.

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Spotlight / Brand X Residency: Olenka Toroshenko

Photo: Lauren Connelly.

Most of us are transplants. Uprooted from one country and resettled, making home in another's. Do you remember where you came from? What happens when culture, language and ancestry are left behind? A lot of lumber, but few roots. What now?

Seed. Water. Root. Grow. Harvest. Eat. Die. Decompose. Repeat.

Told from the perspective of a Ukrainian Canadian living in Australia, this ritual performance - i am root - wonders into how one might question, create and nourish culture in a globalised, colonised world. Olenka enlists her mother tongue (Ukrainian) and the mediums of song, dance, clown, folk traditions and recipes, story, poetry and prayer to enliven the depths of the unspoken, mysterious places where spirit lives...if we're willing to cultivate it.

About the artist:

Olenka Toroshenko is a Ukrainian Canadian artist, writer and producer whose life is in service to a saner, meaningful existence. She is a multidisciplinary performer whose mediums include spoken word poetry, dance, clowning, song, storytelling and ritual performance art. 

She is a Katonah yoga teacher, student of The Orphan Wisdom School and lover of coniferous forests. She has worked in news broadcasting and politics which helped shape her understanding of the current cultural paradigm. She was the co-producer of “wild”, “Shakti Showcase” and “Shakti Rising” multi-artist/disciplinary productions and has toured 4 different continents as a singer, poet and dancer.

She enjoys producing video projects, Burning Man theme camps, and multidisciplinary shows. She is inspired by collaborating with other artists.

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Free-range Residency: Daniel Jaber

Photo: Sam Roberts.

Set in a small, decadent, ornate, unobtainable world of excessive wealth and gluttony. Inside the master suite of a penthouse over looking some fabulously lit metropolis of dreams and histories. An Egyptian-sheet smeared bed, which lay under a large French window of this surreal space creates a playground for Putrid Piggy to take place. Part penthouse apartment, part S&M play room, part bunker, the space evokes a voyeuristic insight into an elegant and sophisticated world of sordid desires. The windows become an evolving display of video and photography that dismantles the fourth wall and the audience transitions from shy onlooker to viscerally responsive participant.

About the artist:

Daniel Jaber was born in Nairne, in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. He is of Lebanese and Maori cultural heritage. Daniel’s dance training began in Adelaide with Christine Underdown (Dancecraft Studios) and Barbara Komazec (Barbie Jayne Dance Centre). He further pursued his training through the Queensland University of Technology, Queensland Ballet Company Professional Year and the Adelaide College of the Arts before joining Australian Dance Theatre as a trainee dancer, under the direction of Garry Stewart, at the age of 17. 

As a company member of ADT (2004-2021), Jaber has toured the world extensively and participated in the creation of new works as well as touring repertoire. 

Jaber has created work for ADT, Expressions Dance Company (now Australasian Dance Collective), Houston Ballet 2, Qantas Australian Tourism Awards, Dance Moms, Dubai Festival, Architanz Tokyo and was the Creative Director of LW Dance Hub (now Dance Hub SA) in 2015. He has choreographed new works on many tertiary institutions, universities and colleges throughout Australasia and the US, including QUT, Adelaide College of the Arts, California State University (LA & Fullerton), Transit Dance and the New Zealand School of Dance.