Program
Support
Information
Temperance Movement #1
Alexander Powers
& Hellen Sky
Provocation Series
DATE & TIME
Wednesday 2 September, 6:30pm
LOCATION
Temperance Hall, Main Hall
199 Napier Street
South Melbourne
ACCESSIBILITY
Wheelchair accessible
TICKETS
Pay as you can here
How are you negotiating practice in this time?
Inspired by the hall’s history of housing meetings of the Emerald Hill Total Abstinence Society, where public testimony was employed to convert others to the movement, Temperance Movement is a new initiative held across four weeks at Temperance Hall that supports choreographers to present new ideas.
Held weekly across September, each iteration of Temperance Movement invites two artists to share their current preoccupations in a supportive, in-progress format — one artist is invited to do so through movement, the other, through speech.
Curated by Dr. Brooke Stamp, the series draws on the history of Temperance Hall as a site of public meetings, where speeches, debates, and personal testimonies were used to persuade and mobilise audiences. Reframed within a contemporary choreographic context, Temperance Movement adopts this structure as a way to create space for critical reflection, articulation, and dialogue around choreographic practice.
Positioned between a showing and a forum, each evening offers a platform for artists to test ideas publicly and to contribute to a broader conversation around the conditions, languages, and preoccupations of contemporary movement-based practice.
FACILITATOR Dr. Brooke Stamp
SPEAKER Alexander Powers
MOVER Hellen Sky
Alexander Powers is an Australian transgender artist experimenting across electronic music, performance art and choreography. Her choreographic works include Time Loop in 2019 at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, inputs outputs, 2021, made for video and screened at Foundation Fiminco, Paris, and Sexual Violence, a 2024 commission from Temperance Hall. In 2024 she inaugurated the first of a trilogy of new autobiographical works for theatre at Melbourne Fringe Festival titled Alexander Powers, followed by Immediate Crisis: A Life… in 2025. Internationally renowned as DJ and electronic musician Female Wizard, Alexander was awarded Best Electronic Act at the 2021 Music Victoria Awards on the back of her second album of experimental techno, TIE-EE-YIE-EE-YIE-EE-YIME released on Heavy Machinery Records. In 2023 she released What A Body Can Do on her own label Powertrip Records, and produced an accompanying performance and sound work, titled What A Myth Can Do, presented by Liquid Architecture. She is currently completing a Master in Fine Art at Monash University.
Hellen Sky is an Australian digital choreographer / performer / writer / visual artist. Her interdisciplinary practice bridges dance, performance, visual arts, theatre and installation. Her photography is held in private and public collections. Hellen is Co - Founder Artistic Director internationally recognised New Media Dance company-Company in Space, She was co founder Artistic Director of Dancehouse & since 2009 Hellen sky and collaborators.
Sky Studied at the Australian Ballet School, University of Melbourne,Victorian College of the Arts- Dance (BA), Post Graduate Research RMIT Architecture Department “Borderless Bodies “(SIAL- Spatial Information Architecture Dept ). She is a Fellow of the Australia Council Dance. Sky is valued for her research and reflection on dance and embodiment. Her practice is often in collaboration with other artists, and research fields. She devises scores and spatial design systems for gallery and theatre, working with both tangible and digital material. Her movement work is informed by Deborah Hay (USA) and Tibetan energetic yoga practices (Australia, France).
Placing equal value on the movement between all aspects of the work sound, light, body, texts, architecture, screen and textures. Her projects are complex and multi-layered - articulated and refined over a number of years and advanced through multi-disciplinary collaborations and global exchanges - considering the potential of the site and the potential of a gesture.