Wantok Musik, Melbourne Fringe, land international funding

World and Indigenous music association Wantok Musik and Melbourne Fringe, are among 13 Victorian performing arts companies that have been literally sent packing via the Victorian state government’s International Engagement program.

Wantok Musik

Received $20,000 to travel to Papua New Guinea to present the A Bit Na Ta installation in Port Moresby.

It celebrates Pacific song, dance and culture through recordings, soundscapes and films and will be presented as part of the activities surrounding the APEC Summit.

Melbourne Fringe

Will use its $10,000 grant towards a residency by Germany’s Forschungstheater and Hamburg-based artist Sybille Peters during the 2018 Fringe Festival.

The residency will be part of the festival’s XS program of experimental, contemporary and live art for children.

Other recipients include:

• Following its move to Bendigo, Arena Theatre Company broadened its horizons on the weekend courtesy $9,900 with its first tour to China to perform the cabaret rock and theatre show Sunny Ray & The Magnificent Moon, created in collaboration with Clare Bartholomew and Danial Tobias.
• ILBIJERRI Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative Ltd ($30,000) tours Blood On The Dance Floor – which explores the intersections between HIV Positive, gay and First Nations identities – over six weeks and five venues in Canada.
• Melbourne Writers Festival ($30,000) will bring international literary programmers through August to meet local publishers and develop international exchange partnerships with local literary organisations.
• Rawcus Theatre swaps St Kilda for San Francisco for its first international trip in 2019, work with renowned dancer and choreographer Marc Brew and his company AXIS. Both make work with artists with and without disabilities.
• Red Stitch will make its international debut in October performing its acclaimed production desert 6.29pm, by Melbourne-based playwright Morgan Rose, at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China. It follows the story of an Australian family living in a tiny community and focuses on the perspective of Xan, a young, closeted, gay woman.
• Circus Oz ($30,000) to tour its latest production Model Citizens to Spain (six performances) and Germany (33 performances) in November and December 2018.
• Emerging Writers Festival ( $6,770) for an exchange project with Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali which see three Australians travel in October.
• Lucy Guerin Inc, ($30,000) to tour dance work Split to ten festivals and events in Jakarta, Groningen, Dusseldorf, Aarhus, Tokyo, New York, Portland, Budapest, Paris and Bruges.
• The La Mama team ($30,000) travel sto Bandung, Indonesia in August to work with Indonesian theatre company Mainteater to collaborate on the development of a new performance Hades Fading (Hades Memudar). It premieres in Indonesia and will tour around regional areas in 2019 before an Australian performance season in 2020.
• Chunky Move ($25,000) to tour the performance Complexity of Belonging to the Netherlands.
• Liquid Architecture Sound ($19,500) to undertake a new sound art project Why Listen to Plants in Lofoten, Norway.