Succession returns in 2025 with an exciting program, sharing the works of three inspiring emerging artists — Buddy Malbasias, Erin O’Rourke, and ADC Company Artist Lily May Potger — and Youth Ensemble Director Courtney Scheu.
Playful, dynamic, dreamlike, meditative — this collection of works is delightfully diverse thematically and stylistically. From Buddy’s raucous reflection on his lived experience of the space between culture and identity, Lily’s gentle, heart-filled socially conscious research, to Courtney’s poignant imaginings of our future, and Erin’s rhythmic exploration of exclusion, our Youth Ensemble artists have responded confidently to each processes.
As the name suggests, Succession is a key platform in ADC’s commitment to actively developing the next generation of dancers and dance makers.
05 WELCOME TO SUCCESSION
We arrive at the end of our 2025 Youth Ensemble year with energy and momentum, celebrating the 7th year of this extraordinary program — and my first as director.
This season has been a powerful reminder of what young artists can create when given space, trust, and challenge. We continue to champion rich, practice–based, collaborative processes that empower young artists and bring vibrant, original work to performance spaces. Buddy, Erin and Lily are brimming with knowledge, ideas and stories, and it has been incredibly valuable for our Ensemble to learn from and form connections with these outstanding creatives. Thanks to each of you for guiding our Ensemble with generosity and integrity.
Our dancers have moved through this season with creative confidence and a strong sense of connection, embracing new processes and complex concepts along the way. They approached this fastpaced creation period with maturity, openness, and curiosity. They’ve continued to bring greater clarity, range, and care to their artistry and to the way they communicate their ideas in a performance setting.
To their loved ones and biggest cheerleaders, thank you for your support, enthusiasm and investment in the development, well-being and futures of these talented artists. I am proud and honoured to share this evening of works with you.
Congratulations!
Courtney Scheu ADC Youth Ensemble Director
2025 YOUTH ENSEMBLE
Rylee Crossley
Ashlee Barnetson
Ada Feeney
Isla Gillespie
Georgia Hart
Madison Hardwick
Kate Hodgson
Gabrielle Jackson
Isa King
Annika Lewis
Ruby Mason
Dakota McCullough Isabella Messer
Anagha Raskar
Cordelia Richards
Matilda Shanks
Meena Sayed
Madison Small Neve Smith
Isabela Thompson Amy Wake Neve Wright
08 MEET THE CREATIVES
Buddy Malbasias
Choreographer
Buddy Malbasias is a Filipino Australian (Bukidnon-born) independent artist-researcher, director, choreographer and performer.
With a rich movement history (from award-winning hip-hop crews, street style to formalised dance education, improvisation, theatre), his practice now exists at the intersection of contemporary performance, waacking and interdisciplinary experimentation.
Rooted in the Filipino diaspora, Buddy’s practice navigates cultural hybridity, queer identity and imaginative world-building to reimagine the immigrant Filipino body in performance. Working across dance, theatre and design, his shapeshifting works blend movement, text, and found objects to create thoughtprovoking experiences—part self-exploration, part sociocultural reflection. His ongoing inquiry into Kapwa (shared self) invites audiences to engage with notions of belonging, heritage and embodied memory.
Erin O’Rourke Choreographer
Erin O’Rouke is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and researcher based across Meanjin and Naarm.
Erin has performed in festivals across Australia and beyond including Melbourne Now, Mona Foma (Tasmania), Now or Never Festival (Melbourne), Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance (QLD), and Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria), working with notable artists: Jenni Large, Harrison Hall, and The Farm.
Her recent choreographic credits include ‘TUG’ from The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque season 2024 (mentored by Stephanie Lake and David Hallberg), ‘object-shun’ for Dancehouse X Melbourne Fringe Festival 2023 and ‘when the water gets cold’ for Transit Dance, all concerned with depictions of women, in media and myth. Erin was awarded The Australian Ballet/Telstra Emerging Choreographer in 2022 for her dance film ‘yellow mellow’ which has since shown at Dancehouse’ Dance (Lens) Official Selection.
Lily May Potger
Choreographer
Hailing from Garlambirla (Coffs Harbour), Lily May Potger trained with Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London.
They are a multidisciplinary artist working across mediums of performance, textiles and costume design working with found materials.
During their career, Potger has worked most notably with, Hofesh Shechter, Christopher Bruce, Anthony Matsena, The Bait Fridge and Australasian Dance Collective. They have performed in the UK and Australia where they continue to facilitate workshops and classes that provide spaces for the exchange of knowledge and the strengthening of community bonds.
Since returning from the UK, Potger has created and collaborated on works focusing on access and sharing between community and art across Australia.
Courtney Scheu
Choreographer
Courtney Scheu is an independent dance artist whose practice spans performance, choreography, education, research, producing and interdisciplinary art making.
Courtney is the only Certified Gaga Teacher based in Australia, Gaga: Ohad Naharin’s Movement language. Her choreographic work has been presented in events and festivals across Australia and internationally over the past 14 years. Scheu’s choreographic work plays between the waking and the dreaming worlds, the real and the unreal. Courtney was co-founder and co-artistic director of OUTBOUND | Contemporary Dance x Live Art Festival on Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi Country (Sunshine Coast) 2023. In 2025, Courtney assumed the role of Youth Ensemble Director at Australasian Dance Collective. She has worked actively in the youth dance space in various capacities and is passionate about nurturing young makers, thinkers and leaders. Courtney loves dance for its capacity to create meaningful discoveries and connections.
Corned Beef 10
9 mins
Funny, not funny. Serious, not serious. Everything, everywhere, all at once, Spiderverse; Hot pink ramen. Corned beef?
*A can cracked open*: Corned Beef is a playful meditation on the liminal spaces between culture and identity, where meaning slips, shifts and misaligns. Drawing from the Filipino canned staple as a metaphor for culture shock, the work bites into hybridity, polarity and cultural nuances, further illuminating the playfulness and curiosity of the inner child as an essential presence within traditional frameworks. Across five short sessions, the dancers experimented with performance ecologies, extending the world of Buddy Malbasias’ debut work Bahala/o, premiering at Metro Arts this November 2025. CREATIVES
Gurgling under faint light, the group searching their environment with shushing, echoes and wails.
They have built this world with their voices, their bodies, their ideas, their movement, with each other. This work is a reflection in care. What these incredible young people have discovered with each other is a projection, a hologram of freedom they find in each other when they fall openly together in the deep, into the mud, into the trouble.
CREATIVES
CONCEPT, DIRECTION & CHOREOGRAPHY
Lily May Potger and ADC Youth Ensemble
SOUND DESIGNER/ LEAD Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi
SOUND RECORDING Conor MacDonald
COMPOSITION COLLABORATOR Lily May Potger
CAST Ada Feeney, Amy Wake, Dakota McCullough, Gabrielle Jackson, Isa King, Isabela Thompson, Katherine Hodgson, Madison Hardwick, Madison Small, Matilda Shanks, Neve Wright, Rylee Crossley
Ghost Systems 12
8 mins
Ghost Systems is a continuation of Courtney Scheu’s inquiry into representations of, and reflections on, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic worlds.
In developing this work, we began by connecting with our local environments, holding the perspective that our immediate nature is the most sacred thing in our worlds.
We then asked: What will the rot and ruin of our current AI-driven, high-tech reality look like? What will our technology leave behind? What traces, artefacts, or ghost systems will remain?
CREATIVES
CONCEPT, DIRECTION & CHOREOGRAPHY Courtney Scheu
COLLABORATORS ADC Youth Ensemble
MUSIC Original sound design by Harel Tsemach Ouvna by ori lichtik
grate confronts the dissonance in our world, where the space between us is quietly failing us all.
It traces the ache of almost-connections, the fragile beauty of belonging, and the unseen violence of exclusion. In the resistance to fit in, grate asks: can small acts of reaching across these divides heal the fractures that separate us?
CREATIVES
CONCEPT, DIRECTION & CHOREOGRAPHY
MUSIC
CAST
Erin O’Rourke
Omertá by Tujurikkuja
Ada Feeney, Anagha Raskar, Cordelia Richards, Isa King, Isabela Thompson, Isla Gillespie, Isabella Messer, Katherine Hodgson, Madison Hardwick, Madison Small, Matilda Shanks, Ruby Mason, Rylee Crossley
MEET THE COLLECTIVE
ADC STAFF
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CEO
Amy Hollingsworth
ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Jack Lister
HEAD OF OPERATIONS
HEAD OF MARKETING
Jade Ellis
Jade Fantozzi
MARKETING MANAGER Madelyn Wise
PRODUCTION MANAGER Mathew James
PRE-PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Alison Currie
REHEARSAL DIRECTOR Sam Coren
YOUTH ENSEMBLE DIRECTOR
MATURE PROGRAM COORDINATOR
ADMINISTRATION OFFICER
Courtney Scheu
Jaime Redfern
Josephine Reid
ACCOUNTANT Karen Mitchell
FINANCE OFFICER
Elizabeth Lepua
SUCCESSION
PRODUCTION STAFF
PRODUCTION MANAGER Mathew James
PRODUCTION TECHNICIAN Bryce Delaney
TECHNICAL CONSULTANT Krank’d
BOARD
CHAIR
Julie Garner
Tony Denholder
Laura Campbell
Samantha Jones
Carmenza Cespedes
Deborah Brown
COMPANY SECRETARY Tracey Moore
COMPANY ARTISTS
Sam Hall
Lilly King
Jack Lister
Taiga Kita-Leong
Lily May Potger
Georgia Van Gils
PHOTOGRAPHY
Cover image by Cecilia Martin
Rehearsal images by Jade Ellis
16 OUR PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS
GOVERNMENT PARTNER
MAJOR PARTNERS
FOUNDATION PARTNERS
The L&R Foundation
The Patricia MacDonald Foundation
Cybec Foundation
SPECIAL THANKS
Mature Ensemble Artists
Josephine Reid
Krank’d
Australasian Dance Collective acknowledges the assistance of the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
Australasian Dance Collective acknowledges the assistance of the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts funding and advisory body.
Australasian Dance Collective is proudly supported by Brisbane City Council.
Youth Ensemble Auditions
Photography Jade Ellis
Photography David Kelly
This year, Brisbane Airport celebrates its 100th birthday. Across the century there have been many milestones,
Explore more milestones at bne.com.au/100years
W australasiandancecollective.com IG + FB @australasiandancecollective
