ANNANDALE CREATIVE ARTS CENTRE
ACAC ARTISTS COLLECTIVE
Annandale Creative Arts Centre is home to the following
Artist Collective members.
Alison Williams
Writer
Alison Williams is a recovering creative and writer. With a background in international development and communications, she is currently working on her memoir about the effects of being a missionary kid in the 1980’s and growing up in one of the least developed nations in the world. She also occasionally tries to write other things.
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Alison is on the ACAC leadership team and is most passionate about the power of art to engage artists and audiences in thoughtful contemplation on the issues affecting our world. She is part of the team that brings the Creative Conversations events together each year. Alison is also involved in running the monthly Meeting Place gatherings. In her “spare time” Alison works in book publishing.
Bonnie Curtis
Choreographer
Bonnie Curtis is a multi-faceted artist, driven by an inquisitive imagination and a desire to discover. Born and bred in Sydney, Bonnie trained at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts before moving to Europe to further her artistic development. During her career, Bonnie has worked as an independent artist, playing the role of producer, director, choreographer and performer in works for film, installation and live performance.
Her creations and collaborations have been featured at ImPulsTanz, Museum Moderner Kunst (AT), Girona Film Festival (ES), Quadstock Music Festival (US), CinéWomen|Womenartconnect (EU), Asia International Youth Short Film Exhibition (CN), Biennale of Sydney, Sydney World Film Festival, and Sydney Fringe Festival (AU), among others. She is the Artistic Director of Bonnie Curtis Projects, company in residence at ACAC.
Colleen O'Connell
Musician
Angus McPherson
Writer & filmmaker
Angus is a film and television editor by trade. He also has a background in short film and documentary development, along with a passion for writing. He is currently moving back towards that passion, with a major screen writing project in the works. He has long had a pronounced interest in the visual and dramatic
arts, and he has long had a keen interest in history and culture.
Heather Prowse
Musician
Heather Prowse is a trumpeter, flugelhornist, vocalist, bandleader and composer. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music (Jazz Performance – Trumpet) from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2017, and in 2018 was selected to participate in the Australian Art Orchestra's Creative Music Intensive.
She is the Director of 343 Brass Band, a lively New Orleans-style group, who released their debut EP in 2021. '343' are grateful to have regular rehearsal and performance opportunities at ACAC.
Heather is also a member of blues outfit Sugar Bowl Hokum and the South Coast Big Band, and is a former member of internationally acclaimed big bands Sydney Conservatorium Jazz Orchestra and Sirens Big Band. She has performed as an associate artist with Lime Cordiale, DOBBY, Jackie Brown Jr and The Tipsy Scholars. She is an in-demand private brass tutor and band director across Sydney and serves on several leadership teams at ACAC.
JSJ Core Team
Andrew Lorien, Katrina Drake, Keiran Hogan, Ashley Asphodel
Johnston Street Jazz is an artist-run no-profit weekly jazz and improv club. They have been supporting emerging and unlikely jazz for 20 years. Every Thursday night they host a usually-local, usually-acoustic, usually-instrumental, usually-improvising jazz band. Music of the highest quality, often new projects from established musicians or fresh music from the new generation.
Jay Bailey
Choreographer
JC Bailey is a choreographer, performer and dance teacher based in Sydney. Her practice includes dance theatre for stage and film and researching partnering techniques. She is currently the Director of Hanging Around Co. (HAC) since 2014 and continues to create work with local artists and collaborators.
Through the generous support of ACAC, JC continues to operate Hanging Around Co., offering a space for idea exchange and research into collaboration and partnering techniques in choreography to the local community. Projects included sharing repertoire and remounting past works; sustaining a research space for ground to air pathways; generating new work; and growing new connections between the local dance community and ACAC community.
Katrina Breuker
Physical performer
Katrina grew up with a love of performing arts, performing whenever given the opportunity as a child, she went on to train in theatre at a tertiary level and was stage manager for two Adelaide Fringe shows before moving to Sydney.
Since joining Annandale Creative Arts Centre, Katrina has helped produce Platform Shorts, Creative Conversations and on the event team for Sydney Artists Retreat and performed alongside other ACAC practitioners in a variety of events. She has also discovered aerial dance through classes with Strings Attached and has fallen in love with this unique art form.
LeeAnne Litton
Physical performer
Lee-Anne Litton is a performance maker, performer, collaborator and mentor who has created and performed nationally and Internationally. Her curiosity in the line between aerial performance and dance theatre and her strong investigation and passion for Contact Improvisation, informs her work both on the ground and in the air.
Lee-Anne was a co founder of Physical Theatre Company Strings Attached, which led to their first major work “A Return to the Trees” in 2012. Her last work “All That We Are” Real Festival 2019, saw her work with community members to create an aerial spectacular over the Nepean River in Penrith.
Over the last few years, she has nurtured her interest in the poetical and expressive possibilities that arise from combining aerial performance and dance theatre, developing a strong technical practice that is reflected in her work as well as on the classes she regularly teaches. Her teaching credits include; Strings Attached, SYDC, AMPA, Australian Dance Theatre, DustyFeet, AUSTI, VCA, ACPE, USNW, NIDA, Force Majeure, Bangarra, Stalker, Aerialize, Touch Compass Co, Dance Integrated Australia, InsideOutside Theatre.
Karleigh Honeybrook
Physical performer
Karleigh is a physical Artist and Practitioner with a mixed physical background of circus aerials, physical theatre, dance and martial arts. Contact Improvisation most strongly informing her physical practice with a close inferface with aerial harness, Karleigh’s pulling a thread woven with themes of strong foundations and safely zero glass ceilings ..to discover what can be created.
Keila Terencio
Physical performer
Keila is a performance artist and art facilitator, born and raised in Brazil. She is curious about ways of storytelling, in my practice I explore physical theatre, aerial dance, puppetry and movement.
She holds a Performing Arts degree with UFPR (Brazil) and has been constantly training and researching new approaches to artistic expression.
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Her works have been programmed at [Un]Contained Festival 2021, ARTBOMB at Hurstville Art Gallery, SSI’s New Beginnings Festival 2018 and 2019, Scratch Art Space as part of Inner West EDGE, 107 Project’s Creative Program, Creative Conversations at Annandale Art Centre and a number of art festivals and performance spaces.
Naomi Downie
Visual Artist
Naomi Downie is a creative person of faith, living in Inner West of Sydney. Her creative journey has included many group exhibitions in Melbourne, Newcastle & Sydney for over 20 years, In a variety of mediums of acrylic, woodcut, photography, etching & lino cut. The last 7 years her focus has been oil painting, trained under Marita Brae in John Orbane Glebe Studio. First Solo show in 2019, at The Orchard Gallery in Waterloo. Duo exhibition at Balmainspace gallery, 2021, alongside ceramics artist Sue Hulland on the theme of Waterways & Belonging.
