Gideon Obarzanek

Gideon Obarzanek (b. 1966), choreographer, director and curator, spent his early life in Israel, attended school in Melbourne and won a place at the Australian Ballet School, choreographing his first piece there in 1987. Having joined the Queensland Ballet as a dancer, he continued to create works including Mr Crowther and the Wallflower (1989). Moving to the Sydney Dance Company, he made Sleep No More in 1991 before becoming an independent choreographer. In 1995 he co-founded Chunky Move, a dance company based first in Sydney and then, from 1997, in Melbourne, where it became Victoria's official contemporary dance company. He was its CEO and artistic director until 2012. Obarzanek's work, which embraces installations, site-specific performance and video, is performed around the world. His many awards include four Helpmanns, three awards for best short documentary film for Dance like Your Old Man (2007) and a New York Bessie award for outstanding choreography and creation for Chunky Move's Tense Dave. In 2010 he appeared on stage for the first time in a decade in the solo work Faker. Since then, his projects have included There's Definitely a Prince Involved (2012) for the Australian Ballet; I Want to Dance Better at Parties (2013) for the Sydney Theatre Company, made into a docu-drama that won best short film at the Sydney Film Festival in 2014; Interplay (2013) for the Sydney Dance Company; the virtual reality film Stuck in the Middle with You (2016) for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image; and several pieces for Australian and international festivals. Obarzanek has been artistic associate of the Melbourne Festival, co-curator of XO State at the inaugural Asia Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts, Strategic Cultural Engagement Manager at the University of Melbourne and chair of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In 2020 he was appointed Co-Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Melbourne’s Rising Festival.