Projects

Selection of work from the 1990s to the present.

Dancing between Diversity and Consistency

Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance

Priority Programs research grant (2007-2009) funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), to examine postgraduate research degrees in dance / creative arts.

Chief Investigators: A/Professor Maggi Phillips (Edith Cowan University), A/Professor Cheryl Stock (Queensland University of Technology) & Associate Professor Kim Vincs (Deakin University)

An investigation into key issues and challenges in developing flexible guidelines lines for best practice in Australian Doctoral and Masters by Research Examination, encompassing both written and multi-modal (practice-led/based) theses. The aims of the project were to address issues of assessment legitimacy...

Dance Dialogues: conversations across cultures, artforms, practices

2008 World Dance Alliance Global Summit, Brisbane 12-18 July

Presented by Ausdance Queensland & the World Dance Alliance – Asia Pacific in partnership with QUT Creative Industries, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Ausdance National

Curator: Cheryl Stock

The aim of this multi-platform event was to privilege both the voice and the practices of our emerging and experienced artists and to encourage interdisciplinarity of practice and academic scholarship. It was based around four major issues facing the arts in the 21st century:

transcultural conversations
re-thinking the way we make/teach dance
body/mind connections
sustainability

These four issues...

Accented Body

body as site and in site

A dance-led creative project initiated during a development process in 2005. It was conceived, directed and produced by Cheryl Stock in collaboration with six interdisciplinary teams, who each responded to a detailed creative/research brief based on notions of connectivity and the investigation of the body ‘as site and in site’.

The defining concept of ‘accent’ arose from the ways in which the performing body is encoded: culturally, professionally, via intensive training in specialised techniques (ballet, contemporary dance, butoh, Chinese traditional and Malaysian trance dance), as well as autographically. The project also explored how technology ‘accents’ the virtual...

here / there / then / now

In 2002 director and producer Cheryl Stock, in collaboration with the artists, created four performance installations to inhabit the Brisbane Powerhouse. Not its massive and imposing structures but its more intimate, hidden spaces. Bringing together independent artists in dance, music, visualisation and video, with lighting by Jason Organ, the promenade work evoked three discrete sites, here, there, and then to come together in a performance dialogue, now in the fourth site of the Visy theatre.

stairs to nowhere here
deep crevices with no purpose there
pillars in dialogue with floating objects then
the inviting void of the black box now

...

Unravelling / Traces of Home

Unravelling re-choreographed for the Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre, designs by Michael Pearce. Hanoi, October 2000. Originally entitled Traces of Home, music traditional Japanese and Vietnamese, Pasakorn Suwanaphan, Joseph E.E. Peters, it was first performed in 1998 at QUT Theatre, Brisbane, in Manila for the 1998 Philippines International Dance Festival and remounted in 2001 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

The heady aroma of incense fills the auditorium, coming from hanging bell-shaped coils revealed in Stock’s Traces of Home. Her empathy for Asian culture, gained working in Vietnam, is richly applied in this collaboration with six Asian students, paying homage to Taiwanese, Chinese and Vietnamese traditions in a contemporary context. The...

Through the Eyes of the Phoenix

Direction, coordination, choreography Qua Mat Phuong Hoang (Through the Eyes of the Phoenix) for Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre in collaboration with Tina Yong and Sun Ping, composers Sarah de Jong and Pho Duc Phuong, designer Michael Pearce, with Nguyen Cong Nhac and dancers, singers and musicians from the Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre, Hanoi.

A dance, theatre and music collaboration which draws on Vietnamese folk opera and court styles, French colonial social dances combined with Asian pop styles and contemporary dance. The phoenix is a metaphor for rebirth; the new arising from the old, both in cultural customs and dance styles. The work also explores the similarities between bird and human behaviour portraying the phoenix in various guises.

For further...

Land of Waiting Souls

Land of Waiting Souls, directed and choreographed by Cheryl Stock in collaboration with composer Trong Dai, writer Thi Hong Ngat, designer Thu Ha with 22 dancers and 45 musicians and singers from Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre. Premiered 1995, Opera House, Hanoi, toured throughout Vietnam and to Melbourne for the Green Mill Dance Festival 1996.

An episodic narrative of rural life celebrating the strength of women at war, drawing on Vietnamese traditional folk and operatic forms as well as contemporary techniques.

... clearly and movingly expressed, and the Vietnamese dancers , both physically and technically were a delight to watch

...

Picking out the Glass

Dancing Lives

Dancing Lives, directed by Jim Hughes, featuring Lucette Aldous, Elizabeth Dalman and Cheryl Stock, for Fieldworks Performance Group. Premiered, Perth 1995.

Director’s note:
Dancing lives tells the story of lives, careers, tragedies and heroic achievements of three great legends of Australian dance. The experience, knowledge and dignity which these mature dancers possess, still inform movement and dance in a very special way. Dancing Lives gives recognition to the enormous contribution that Lucette Aldous, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Cheryl Stock have made to Australian dance history.

All three women declare through their work a passion for beauty,...

Broken Places

Directed by Cheryl Stock for Dance North in collaboration with Robyn Archer, choreographed by Cheryl Stock in collaboration with the dancers, music by Robyn Archer, design by Ben Anderson. Premiered Townsville, 1993 and performed at 1994 National Festival of Australian Theatre, Canberra.

A brutally honest portrayal of violence against women, the abuse of power, the silent screams and the living nightmare of those whose reality is hidden from a society which prefers to keep its victims invisible. How can we support such women to become strong at the ‘broken places’?

Broken Places pulls no punches either literally or metaphorically – not for the faint hearted.

Larry Ruffell,...

Fuenteovejuna

Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega (translated by Adrian Mitchell), directors Aubrey Mellor and Cheryl Stock, music Donald Hall, design Mary Moore, lighting David Walters. Queensland Theatre Company production, commissioned by Richard Wherrett for the 1992 Melbourne International Festival.

..in every scene of the large-cast Fuenteovejuna, it seemed as though each individual had been not only precisely placed, but meticulously choreographed. The influence of co-director Cheryl Stock can be discerned in this productions’ physical fluidity, as well as in the episodes of song and dance. Director’s Aubrey Mellor’s and Cheryl Stock’s emphasis on group dynamics rather than individual histrionics has forestalled the play...

Please, No More Palms

Please, No More Palms for Dance North, choreographed by Cheryl Stock, music Balanda Dancing, Kronos Quartet and Ornette Coleman, design by Robyn Gordon.

Commissioned by and premiered at 1994 National Festival of Australian Theatre, Canberra.

An affectionate tongue-in-cheek look at some of nature’s tropical eccentricities as an alternative to the cliché of swaying palms in tourist brochures. The enticing but lethal sensuality of several exotic beauties from the tropics provided source material for the work’s imagery. Humans are alien creatures in this environment. The desire to document, trample over, collect and acquire a piece of the tropics leads the obsessive anti-hero into a world where his high-tech gear and clothing is a ridiculous encumbrance and his...