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Critical Path

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Critical Path is Australia's leading centre for choreographic research and development.

We support independent Australian choreographers to push the boundaries of their practice. WHAT WE DO

Established in 2004, Critical Path is a choreographic research and
development centre based at The Drill Hall, a large rehearsal space on the harbour in central Sydney, Australia. Our principal goal is to support innovative research by NSW choreographers. We deliver a program of research opportunities which promote innovation by creating opportunities for choreographers to explore new ways of working, develop new networks and engage in debate and critical appreciation of dance. Best practice in artistic research is incorporated into a diverse program which features a two strand model of Facilitated and Responsive projects. OUR PROGRAMME

Provides support for experienced choreographers to tailor make research projects addressing their personal needs

Offers group professional development opportunities in workshops and masterclasses, where peer support and sharing is encouraged

Creates a context for mentoring and peer exchange through a program of projects instigated and led by experienced artists

Provides a platform for the sharing of research outcomes to peers, presenters and funders within a supportive critical context

29/10/2026

EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!

We're thrilled to have the amazing Sue Healey presenting Rebellious Bodies: Making Dance in the 21st Century.

5 DECEMBER 2026
SATURDAY 7PM

The Drill Hall, Critical Path
1c New Beach Road, Darling Point, NSW, 2027
Gadigal & Birrabirragal Country

Pay what you can $5 – $15 (+ booking fee)

👉 Link in our bio

In a performance lecture incorporating film and live dance, Sue Healey looks back on a 40-year career in order to look forward.

Modern dance was born rebellious. At the turn of the 20th century, the first cameras captured these pioneer dancers who challenged how bodies could move and be seen. More than a century later, we face another revolution: AI can generate bodies that never existed and choreographies that were never danced. What happens to us when the body becomes technologically reproducible? Is the dancing body still an act of rebellion? Drawing on the collaboration of dance and cinema, and her own practice as a choreographer and filmmaker, Sue asks what a breathing, ageing, unpredictable body can offer that technology cannot – and whether, in the age of AI, the human body might be our most radical medium of dissent.

Rebellious Bodies is our second SeeDance event, a new Critical Path initiative.

This event is proudly supported by the Woollahra Municipal Council’s Cultural Grants Program Woollahra Council and Omeo Dance Inc.

Image Credit: Sue Healey, Knee Deep in Thin Air, 1992.

Image Description: An image of a dancer captured in flight, jumping with her back arched, eyes closed and arms stretching behind her. Beside the dancer is a figure with a face and eyes gazing towards the dancer. The figure is a readymade object constructed from mannequin parts and other materials.

Critical Path respectfully acknowledges the Gadigal and Birrabirragal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where the organisation is based.

29/10/2026

COUNTERTECHNIQUE SESSIONS COMING UP!

The amazing Madeline Harms is coming back to Critical Path to teach two 3-hour Countertechnique Sessions!!!

31 OCT & 1 NOV 2026
SATURDAY & SUNDAY 10AM-1PM

Get sweaty and let’s dance BIG in the beautiful Drill Hall!

In these 3-hour workshops, we will train our minds and bodies through classes and practical tools sessions, getting hands-on with the Countertechnique Toolbox. These tools help us as dancers to stay present, process information, and turn thought into movement with clarity and ease. Going deeper than what just a class can offer — these 3-hour sessions are an opportunity to take more time to further understand, embody, and expand your Countertechnique practice.

The Drill Hall Nicholas Orso
1c New Beach Rd, Darling Point, NSW 2027

Single Session Price: $65 (Saturday or Sunday)
Both Sessions Price: $115 (Saturday & Sunday)

Registration link in bio 💦🤸‍♂️💙

Madeline Harms
Countertechnique

Photos by Max van Pelt.

27/10/2026

COUNTERTECHNIQUE SESSIONS THIS WEEKEND 💙

There are a few spots still available for this weekend’s 3-hour Countertechnique Sessions with Madeline Harms!!!

Look at her fly in this video! Amazing!

31 OCT & 1 NOV 2026
SATURDAY & SUNDAY 10AM-1PM

In these 3-hour workshops, we will train our minds and bodies through classes and practical tools sessions, getting hands-on with the Countertechnique Toolbox. These tools help us as dancers to stay present, process information, and turn thought into movement with clarity and ease. Going deeper than what just a class can offer — these 3-hour sessions are an opportunity to take more time to further understand, embody, and expand your Countertechnique practice.

The Drill Hall Nicholas Orso
1c New Beach Rd, Darling Point, NSW 2027

Single Session Price: $65 (Saturday or Sunday)
Both Sessions Price: $115 (Saturday & Sunday)

Registration link in bio 💦🤸‍♂️💙

Madeline Harms
Countertechnique

Photos by Max van Pelt.

08/10/2026

JOIN US THIS SATURDAY 4PM

The incredible artists Rosalind Crisp (dance) & Deborah May (video) will share seedlings of new DIRt work.

In 2017 Ros returned to Australia after 15 years in Paris to find the majestic forests she grew up in destroyed. She initiated DIRt (Dance In Regional disasTer zones) in Orbost (VIC) to explore how dance and collaborative arts practice might respond to our unfolding extinction crisis. DIRt performances have been given in sites from ruined forest to the Sydney Opera House.

Ros writes: 'DIRt has primarily been an exploration of choreography’s capacity to enter into dialogue with this place, not to re-present it or impose another narrative on it, but to be profoundly ‘undone’ by it.

DIRt has utterly reshaped my Australian choreographic voice.'

A recent shift from the grief-stricken to the absurd is angling Ros away from the abject towards the forgotten, discarded sites left over by man where fragments of nature persist and may even be thriving (and winking at Gilles Clément.)

10 OCTOBER 2026
SATURDAY 4PM

The Drill Hall, Critical Path
1c New Beach Road Darling Point NSW 2027
Gadigal & Birrabirragal Country

Pay what you can $5 – $15 (+ booking fee)

👉 Link in our bio

This sharing is the first in a series of a new Critical Path initiative called SeeDance.

This event is proudly supported by the Woollahra Municipal Council’s Cultural Grants Program Woollahra Council and Omeo Dance Inc.

Video credit: DIRt, Rosalind Crisp, video still by Deborah May, 2026.

Image description: An image of a person dancing amidst the destruction of a recently logged forest in East Gippsland.

Critical Path respectfully acknowledges the Gadigal and Birrabirragal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where the organisation is based.

08/10/2026

We're very excited to announce that the extraordinary artists Rosalind Crisp (dance) & Deborah May (video) will share seedlings of new DIRt work: live and virtual performance in conversation.

10 OCTOBER 2026
SATURDAY 4PM

The Drill Hall, Critical Path
1c New Beach Road, Darling Point, NSW 2027
Gadigal & Birrabirragal Country

Pay what you can $5 – $15 (+ booking fee)

Link in our bio

In 2017 Ros returned to Australia after 15 years in Paris to find the majestic forests she grew up in destroyed. She initiated DIRt (Dance In Regional disasTer zones) in Orbost (VIC) to explore how dance and collaborative arts practice might respond to our unfolding extinction crisis. DIRt performances have been given in sites from ruined forest to the Sydney Opera House.

Ros writes: 'DIRt has primarily been an exploration of choreography’s capacity to enter into dialogue with this place, not to re-present it or impose another narrative on it, but to be profoundly ‘undone’ by it.

DIRt has utterly reshaped my Australian choreographic voice.'

A recent shift from the grief-stricken to the absurd is angling Ros away from the abject towards the forgotten, discarded sites left over by man where fragments of nature persist and may even be thriving (and winking at Gilles Clément.)

This sharing is the first in a series of a new Critical Path initiative called SeeDance, so watch this space!

This event is proudly supported by the Woollahra Municipal Council’s Cultural Grants Program Woollahra Council and Omeo Dance Inc.

Image credit: DIRt, Rosalind Crisp, video still by Deborah May, 2026.

Image description: An image of a person standing amidst the destruction of a recently logged forest in East Gippsland.

Critical Path respectfully acknowledges the Gadigal and Birrabirragal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where the organisation is based.

14/08/2026

Head to Dancing Sydney to read Joshua Di Mattina-Beven’s beautiful text TOUCHING LANGUAGE in response to two incredible performances at Critical Path:

Chloe Chignell’s work SUNCUT with Mara Schwerdtfeger, and Ivey Wawn & Rhiannon Newton’s work Premonition: at the end of a dream of a cave, a portal with Del Lumanta presented by Performance Space.

📸 Chloe Chignell by Anna Kučera
Mara Schwerdtfeger by Anna Kučera
Rhiannon Newton & Ivey Wawn by Lucy Parakhina
Del Lumanta by Lucy Parakhina

05/08/2026

CALL OUT FOR RESEARCH ROOM RESIDENCIES 2026

DEADLINE: SUNDAY 16 AUGUST 2026

Critical Path invites independent choreographers and dancers to undertake focused research inside our small research room from September to December 2026.

A Research Room residency gives an artist the opportunity to use the room to undertake research for their choreographic projects. Review archival footage. Meet and consolidate ideas with collaborators. Reflect on a recent project. Each residency can be between 1 week and 4 weeks. Please note the Research Room is a small room with two desks and a small library.

A Research Room residency can be between 1 and 4 weeks. You can request a period between Monday 31 August – 11 December 2026.

Nice views for daydreaming!
Small space for focusing.

Apply! Link in our bio 💚🍃🌳

04/08/2026

We are so excited to announce a new workshop with the extraordinary Elizabeth Ryan!!

SPACE – for Being and Creation

12-13 SEPTEMBER 2026
SATURDAY & SUNDAY
11AM - 3PM (with half hour lunch break)

The Drill Hall, Critical Path
Gadigal & Birrabirragal Country

$150-$250 (+ booking fee)
Sliding scale depending on one's financial means.

This workshop invites participants into a meditative and spacious experience of the rich terrain existing between meditation and creativity.

Through meditative techniques cultivating present moment awareness and a deepening into an undercurrent of stillness, we will expand into a practice of being and creation with space given to movement, writing, discussion, contemplation and connection to the nature of ourselves and each other in deep listening, witnessing and experiencing.

This is an invitation to pause, reset and refill your inner reservoir of energy, ideas, experiences and new perspectives. An opportunity to unfold, expand and nurture creative aliveness in restorative, inspiring SPACE.

Link in bio ❤️

21/07/2026

We are thrilled to have Naarm-based artists Sofie McClure and Anika De Ruyter in residence at the Drill Hall this week.

Sofie and Anika are developing their stunning new work ‘Dead Weight of Endless Potential’, a disassemblage of the body as a vehicle of habit. Between the infinite suspension of moments of action and a cradling within inertia, the body is pulled beyond its own momentum.

Photo of Sofie McClure and Anika De Ruyter, 'Dead Weight of Endless Potential', Lake George, Ngambri Country, 2026. Film still by William McClure.

13/07/2026

CO/MINGLING 2026

Calling performers, dancers, movers, musicians, vocalists and sound artists!

You’re invited to CO/MINGLING — a collaborative space for artists across different, yet connected practices to come together and experiment through improvisation.

Critical Path is delighted to be hosting two special ‘CO/MINGLES’ at the Drill Hall on:

SATURDAY 25 JULY
SATURDAY 24 October

1pm-4pm
* Doors open at 12:30pm for 1pm start

CO/MINGLING is a program supported by Merrigong Theatre in Wollongong for artists to collaborate once a month in the Illawarra. Artists are welcome to join these sessions in Wollongong throughout the year, as well as to the two sessions in Sydney at the Drill Hall. Build your regular practice with the CO/MINGLING artist collective.

🔗 Link to register for 25 July session is in our bio.

CO/MINGLING is facilitated by Linda Luke. Queries: [email protected]

CO/MINGLING is suitable for dancers, performers, movers and musicians, recent graduates and current tertiary level/pre-professional dance and music students.

Photo credit: Ali Gordon, Alexandra Giraldo-Pedroza, Daryl Wallis and Carla Yamine, photo by Linda Luke. Image courtesy of Linda Luke and Merrigong Theatre Company.

Address

The Drill, 1C New Beach Road, Rushcutters Bay
Darling Point, NSW
2027

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm
Saturday	9am - 5pm
Sunday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61293624023

Website

http://www.criticalpath.org.au/

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