The Body Politic

A workshop facilitated by Tammi Gissell will explore the power of connection to country, self and identity through the lense of LGBTQI+ experience and lived experience of disability. An empowering, meditative and revealing opportunity to claim space and power of self, feel comfortable in your body and move in your own way.

TAMMI GISSELL BA, PTP (Hons) 

Tammi Gissell is a dancer, performance artist and choreographer as well as being a published poetess and performance theorist. She proudly descends from the Murruwarri nation – quite literally the ‘Back of Bourke’ in North-Western NSW. Since 1996, she has toured regionally, nationally and internationally in a range of performance genres from contemporary, contemporary-Indigenous, musical and physical theatre, cabaret, pantomime, endurance & performance art.

She holds a Bachelor of Performance: Theory and Practice from the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and was inducted into the Golden Key International Honour Society for achievements in performance theory In 2004,; and later graduated Deans' Medallist and Reconciliation Scholar in 2005. This same year, Tammi began her mentorship with revered Australian dance master Graeme Watson which continues today. From 2007 to 2011 Tammi was Course Coordinator at NAISDA Dance College. She has also appeared with leading Australian dance and theatre makers including Mirramu Dance Co., The Physical TV Company, Branch Nebula, Kinetic Energy Theatre Co., Liz Lea and Co., Graeme Watson, Bernadette Walong-Sene, Deon Hastie, Jason Pitt, Deborah Pollard, Sani Townson, and Lina Limosani. In 2010 Tammi was invited by the World Dance Alliance to present her research paper ‘Dancing the Dreaming: Temporality and Contemporary-Indigenous Dance Practice’ and solo work ‘WHERE’ (Choreographed by Graeme Watson) at the World Dance Alliance Global Dance Event held in New York City. She was also awarded an Inaugural Guillermo Keys-Arenas Scholarship to create her first major ensemble work ‘A VELIKOVSKY AFFAIR’.

Tammi has taught, lectured or held residency at the Queensland University of Technology, Victorian College of the Arts (Wilin Centre), University of Newcastle, NAISDA Dance College, Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts (ACPA), McDonald College, Quantum Leap (QL2), Canberra Dance Theatre, National Institute for Youth Performing Arts and National Youth Dance Theatre. She has additionally sat on the Australian Tertiary Dance Council (2008-2011), been a panellist the BlakDance First Nations Dance Panel in 2012. In 2013 Tammi has been an advisor to Quantum Leap Youth Dance Company for the ‘HIT THE FLOOR TOGETHER’ production and a speaker at the National Dance Forum. While artist in residence at ACPA (2011) she created FEATHER + TAR, which was re-developed into ‘FEATHER & TAR: A CABARET OF SORROWS’ and presented in the Australian Dance Award nominated production BLAKDANCE 2012.

Also in 2011, she was commissioned to write ‘A Powerful Pride: Reflections upon dance and performance of the Torres Strait Islands’ for THE TORRES STRAIT, a reference book to accompany the 2011 ‘AWAKENING’ season and celebration of Torres Strait Islander culture; held in conjunction with Queensland Museum, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the Art Gallery of Queensland. She has completed choreographic commissions for OCHRE Dance Company in 2012, Canberra Dance Theatre for the National Gallery of Australia in 2013 as well as presenting her short solo work A DIP FOR NARCISSUS at Lineage (FORM Dance Projects) in May 2013. In 2012, Tammi began research and development of a full-length solo work around the Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo with Liz Lea & Co. entitled MAGNIFICUS MAGNIFICUS, which will premiere at the Street Theatre, Canberra in October 2013. She remounted GIN.WOMAN.DISTRESS with Elizabeth Cameron-Dalman in Taiwan and New Zealand in November 2013 and October 2016.