New choreographers announced for PIECES 2025

Presented once again with our friends at Lucy Guerin Inc, PIECES 2025 promises to be a highlight of the contemporary dance calendar. This year, we'll spotlight the innovative work of three more exceptional artists pushing the boundaries of dance in Naarm. 
 
Commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc and UMAC, Jenni Large, Jo Lloyd and Siobhan McKenna will each premiere a distinctive new piece, forming an eclectic triple bill with an audacious artistic vision. 
 
Mark your calendars! PIECES 2025 will run from 26 to 28 November at the Union Theatre with tickets on sale in October. The PIECES waitlist is now open.

Jenni Large is an independent dancer, teacher, and award-winning choreographer/director based in Kanamaluka/Launceston, Lutruwita/Tasmania. Driven by the personal, political, and transformative forces of embodiment, Jenni’s multi-limbed practice spans 15 years of dynamic experiences in independent and company environments across Australia. As a dancer, she has performed extensively throughout metropolitan, regional and remote Australia as well as Europe, the UK, NZ, the Americas, Japan and Singapore with artists and companies including Dancenorth, Tasdance, Dance Nucleus, Legs On The Wall, GUTS Dance, SA Opera/Leigh Warren and Ashleigh Musk.  
 
Heavily influenced by aesthetics and cinematic tropes, her choreographic work is flamboyant and restrained, thematically analysing patriarchal systems, celebrating women and attempting to expose societal assumptions of stigmatised subjects. She has presented her work both as an independent artist and through commissions Australia-wide at festivals and institutions including; Mona Foma, Ten Days On The Island, Ohm Festival Brisbane Powerhouse, Dancehouse, Carriage Works, Desert Festival, ADT:Raw, Sound + Fury,  Sydney Dance Company, WAAPA, Stompin, Australasian Dance Collective and Tasdance. 
 
In 2022, Jenni won the People’s Choice Award for her Keir Choreographic work Wet Hard and was honoured to receive a Chloe Munro Fellowship. Recently, she participated in an Asia Link Singapore Arts Now exchange, performed in the UK and EU in THAW (Legs On The Wall) and premiered her newest independent work Wet Hard Long at Dancehouse in Naarm/Melbourne, which received a Green Room nomination for Outstanding Visual Design.

Jo Lloyd is a dance artist based in Naarm, Melbourne working with choreography as a social encounter, revealing behaviour over various durations and contexts. Her practice seeks to find a language that refuses the limits of history, form and aesthetic. She has presented and performed her work in galleries, museums and theatres both nationally and internationally including commissions with Nibroll Japan, New Zealand Dance Company, Rising, Bundanon Museum of Art, Tasdance, Dancenorth, Chunky Move and ACCA. After graduating from the VCA, Jo worked with Chunky Move/ Gideon Obarzanek, Shelley Lasica and Sandra Parker. She has received several Green Room nominations and awards, including three for her work Overture, Arts House 2018 and Melbourne Festival 2019.  

Recent works include; Out of Theatre for Melbourne Now at the Nation Gallery of Victoria and FM Air for The National 4 in 2023, Handsome at The Substation 2022, Archive the archive for National Gallery of Australia's Know My Name exhibition 2020 and DOUBLE DOUBLE created and performed with Deanne Butterworth, Tina Havelock Stevens and Evelyn Morris. Jo was Resident Director of Lucy Guerin Inc. in 2016 and recipient of a Chloe Munro Fellowship 2022. Jo creates and presents work out of Studio 24, Abbotsford Convent with producer Michaela Coventry.

Siobhan McKenna is a Melbourne/Naarm based dance artist originally from the Bega Valley in NSW. Her experience in dance spans working as a collaborating performer, choreographer, rehearsal director and both teacher or participant in various workshops, classes and residency programs. Her choreographic work and practice has been supported by organisations and venues such as Sydney Dance Company, Dancehouse, Temperance Hall, Lucy Guerin Inc., The Substation, Dance Massive, Darebin Arts, The Gunpowder Trading Post and Critical Path, Australian Dance Theatre and the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, and ImpulsTanz (Vienna). 
 
Both of Siobhan's work's Utterance and Rhythmic Fictions were nominated for Best Choreography in the 2019 and 2022 Green Room Awards and, in 2022, Siobhan was incredibly grateful to receive an independent artist fellowship from the late Chloe Munro AO and Lucy Guerin Inc. Siobhan's work often centers around exploring playful ways of integrating vocal sound, movement and language together to consider the fragility of communication and interpretation.