Announcing 2026 Front Studio Residents

We are pleased to announce our 6 Front Studio Residents for 2026 are: Marcus McKenzie, Oliver Savariego, Amaara Raheem, Daniel R Marks, Iris Elgar, and Michelle Heaven

In 2026, each of these 6 artists will be provided with their own key to the building, 2 x months of exclusive access to our Front Studio, a stipend, and photographic documentation of a public outcome; the form of which will be determined in dialogue with Temperance Hall staff. 

We received 68 applications from this years EOI call out, with the number of excellent applications far exceeding the number of places available. Our assessment panel was comprised of Temperance Hall Director, William McBride, Temperance Hall Executive Producer, Anna McDermott, and Temperance Hall artist Board Members, Brett Chenowyth, Brooke Stamp, and Priya Namana. 

The Front Studio Residency cohort represents a dynamic range of practices and approaches to the expanded fields of dance and performance, where the body is central. These artists exemplify the rigour, boldness, risk, queerness, strangeness, and obsessive dedication to body-based practice that Temperance Hall is known for.  

We very much look forward to seeing how each artists' practice evolves during their time in residence at Temperance Hall, and inviting you to gather throughout the year as they share their artistic findings,  inquiries and research outcomes.

Much gratitude to generous seed funding from private supporters of Temperance Hall, as well as support  the City of Port Phillip and the Neilson Family Foundation for enabling this opportunity to continue into the future. 

ARTIST BIOS

Marcus McKenzie’s work uses the relationship between audience and performer as a site for weird sensory encounters, often incorporating schisms in language, parafictional wor(l)d-building, meme-adjacent media and questionable dancing. His works take place in theatres, galleries, supermarkets, nightclubs and churches.

Australia: Rising. Mona. Mona Foma. Dark Mofo. Arts Centre Melbourne. Liveworks. The Substation. Kaldor. Miscellania. Soft Centre, Le Fag. Lucid Danceclub. Soft Centre. Aphids. Pony Cam. Pony Express. Deep Soulful Sweats. Gertrude Contemporary. Kings ARI. Blindside. Wheeler Centre. Art Gallery of NSW. NGV. RMIT Gallery. Malthouse. Belvoir. Terrapin. Cantos. House of Vnholy. Un Projects. Aesthetic Calculations. Joel Stern. Shian Law. Georgia Banks. Mike Hewson. Zoë Bastin. Geoffrey Watson. Tamara Saulwick.

Internationally, Marcus has worked with Michael Portnoy (NY) for Steirischerherbst (AT); Tim Crouch for Unicorn Theatre (UK); and has recently toured Japan and Singapore with Terrapin and performed in Ireland with Pan Pan. Other international engagements include Xavier Le Roy, Hermann Nitsch and Lynsey Peisinger.

Oliver Savariego is a choreographer and dancer based in Naarm/Melbourne. His work questions and queers aesthetic values concerning the body, toys with objectivity and subjectivity in performance, celebrates his dance lineages whilst challenging practices of inspiration, reference and appropriation. Since graduating from the VCA in 2017, he has explored these ideas in new choreographic language, creating Untitled with Stuart Shugg at Weisacres in New York City, and Surface Area with Chloe Arnott at Prahran Skate Park. He developed an online installation Creche in 2021, which was reworked for live performance in 2023 at Dancehouse. He is currently working on Slapdash, a solo work and broader practice that simultaneously venerates and defaces the work of his influences and mentors.

Oliver has collaborated extensively within the Australian dance community. He is currently working with Lucy Guerin Inc, has performed with Phillip Adams Balletlab, Tasdance and Sydney Dance Company, and has worked with independent artists Shelley Lasica, Jo Lloyd, Melanie Lane, Sandra Parker, Harrison Ritchie Jones among many others. He is a proud collaborator in award winning projects, notably Phillip Adam’s Triptych which received 2023 Green Room Award for Best Ensemble, and Sandra Parker’s Safehold, winning the 2024 Green Room Award for Best Choreography.

Amaara Raheem is a dance-artist whose work entangles dancing, writing, documentation and archives, drawing audiences into a physical imagination where fact and fiction blur. Born in Sri Lanka, raised in Naarm, and shaped by fifteen years in London, she works through long-term intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations. Recent projects include re-play as a choreographic method through the Frank Van Straten Fellowship with Chunky Move, and Sick Witch Recites the Greater Mandala of Uselessness, a Firstdraft Writers Program commission exploring illness, agency, and embodied myth. Amaara is co-editor of Choreographic Practices, Convenor of Dance Research Australia, and part of the Curatorial Team at London Contemporary Dance School (The Place), where she teaches on the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism. She recently performed in Arini Byng’s How Just To Be (Gertrude Glasshouse, 2025) and Liz Rosenfeld’s Tremble (Temperance Hall, 2025). She lives between Naarm and Gariwerd, where dancing and bush regeneration intersect as practices of attention, improvisation, fury, and ecstasy.

DRM (Dr Daniel R Marks) is an artist and researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne, working in an interdisciplinary choreographic practice which engages intersections of image-making histories (with attention to the iconographic image), ephemeral and extractive materialities, queer radicalism and surveillance/militarised technology. They work in a hybrid practice incorporating performance, virtual and screen-based formats, sculpture (including wearable sculpture and installation), experimental text, and sound composition.

DRM completed their PhD Protagonist: A Choreography of Queer Digitiality at RMIT University School of Art in 2024 and are a lecturer at RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles. They are affiliated with Performing Dress Lab (RMIT, Aalto University & London College of Fashion), the Posthuman Art Network (Foreign Objekt), and ACMI X. Recent work by DRM has been shown by ACMI, Temperance Hall and Liquid Architecture.

Iris Elgar is an independent dance artist who works within choreographic and improvised durational modes. Informed by their training in ballet and contemporary dance, alongside queer theory, Iris moves through imagined worlds filled with dykes, fools, and primordial beings. In 2022, Iris completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at the Victorian College of the Arts, and they were awarded the Phillip Adams VCA Mentorship Award the same year. Iris has performed in spaces including Temperance Hall, Dancehouse, Abbotsford Convent, Regent Theatre, Testing Grounds, Seventh Gallery, Bus Projects, and Unassigned Gallery. They are particularly interested in working with themes of fantasy, queerness, nature, and failure. Iris values sustainability in their practice, with the aim to responsibly and consciously source their costuming and set elements.

Michelle Heaven is an award-winning choreographer and movement-based performance artist with a passion for bending formats, creating illusion and distorting appearances through the convergence of organic and inanimate forms. Her professional career spans choreography and performance across dance, theatre, circus and puppetry. Her work has been presented at Seoul Dance Festival, Beijing Dance Festival, Melbourne Festival, Dance Massive, The Substation, Castlemaine State Festival and DreamBIG Children’s Festival.