SAMANTHA CHESTER

Samantha Chester has been involved in the Australian independent arts industry for the past 15 years where she has worked as a dancer, producer, director, arts administrator, choreographer and teacher. Her formal training includes a BA in Dance from UNSW, a Post-Grad in Arts Management from UTS and a post-grad in Movement Studies NIDA.

She has choreographed fifteen short works and one full-length work including Bound Sonata - Adelaide Fringe (2000) Peepshow1:Are you going to love me (2001) The Men’s Room, NIDA (2005), between 1994 and 1997 she co-directed dance theatre company Fleshdollies, has been a company member of Darc Swan Dance Company and Street Theatre Troupe Stretch MK1 touring nationally and internationally. She has worked as a movement/director on; Loot NIDA (2002), Last of the Knucklemen (2006), The Attic NIDA (2006), Theatre of Image’s Go Pinocchio (2006) The Launch of the Essential Tour at the Opera House (2007), ARTSLAB program at Shopfront theatre for young people (2007) and most recently the Fabulous Punch and Judy Show for Café Debris Productions (2008).

In 2004 she received the Mike Walsh fellowship from NIDA and the Dame Joan Sutherland Award to travel to New York to study with American director Anne Bogart and The SITI co. She co-founded and manages Queen Street Studio a non-profit creative development and rehearsal space for independent artists and is currently devising two new works Proximity and Monster Forming. She teaches and directs at Shopfront Theatre for young people, the Actors Centre, NIDA, Ashfield Youth Theatre and has recently been appointed an artist representative for the Board of Critical Path, a peak research facility for independent dance in NSW.