Towering ambition: ADC has high hopes for 2026
Australasian Dance Collective will start the year with a unique performance in a Brisbane CBD office tower.
After last year’s 40th birthday celebration Australasian Dance Collective has hit the ground running in 2026 to forge new milestones – returning to the studio to rehearse a site-specific season that will be the first of three world premieres.
From March 19 to 28, Code of Conduct will insert the ensemble in novel territory and elevate audiences, transporting them high above the city to a bespoke environment occupying an entire floor of 300 George Street.
Featuring a distinctive “honeycomb” metal façade, the commercial 42-level Tower 3 is part of the mixed-use Brisbane Quarter precinct on the former Law Courts site bounded by Ann and George streets and North Quay.
The award-winning ultra-modern redevelopment contrasts dramatically with the raw and elemental setting of the working UAP Foundry in last year’s immersive production, Relic.
For ADC artistic director and CEO Amy Hollingsworth, this opportunity arising from ADC’s partnerships and networks is a “deliciously different” step along “a beautiful continuum of artmaking”.
“The building has both an incredible footprint and incredible views of the city. It feels like it could be anywhere, but it’s very distinctly Brisbane,” she says. “We’re very, very excited about this new adventure. It represents forging ahead, investing in new art, the artists that we work with and building the community that we exist in.”
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Hollingsworth and associate AD Jack Lister, Relic’s creator and company artist, are collaboratively choreographing the work for seven performers, including Lister.
The pair’s movement will be set to a commissioned score by frequent collaborator Louis Frere-Harvey that draws on their mutual love of classical music. Hollingsworth’s aim is for the composition “weaving some really well-known pieces amongst Louis’s incredible sound design”, to be played live by a pianist.
While the site has not been fitted out, she notes that the location’s conventional work environment presents numerous challenges for accommodating an audience. To limit potential disruption, performances will be scheduled mostly at weekends.
In addition to promenade staging that immerses viewers in the performance environment, there will be a component staged for a stationary perspective, which has proven unexpectedly complex.
“There’s a lot of logistics involved finding a way to seat the entire audience in an office building,” Hollingsworth laughs.
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Since debuting in 2021, the THREE triple bill has become a cornerstone of ADC’s program. This year’s line-up from July 15 to 18 at Brisbane Powerhouse features as-yet untitled commissions by Amber McCartney and Joel Bray, alongside guest artist Harrison Ritchie-Jones’ acclaimed duet CUDDLE, which he will perform with Michaela Tancheff.
Hollingsworth says she is thrilled to be showcasing McCartney’s first creation on ADC, after her unique solo Tiny Infinite Deaths’ rapturous reception in 2024’s THREE. She declares McCartney “one of Australia’s most incredibly exciting emerging choreographic voices”.
Bray’s involvement is the culmination of a discussion begun in 2019. That led to a three-week residency with the collective that germinated the seed for this new work. Hollingsworth was so impressed that she told him: “‘Let’s go – let’s take it the whole way’. And so, it is really beautiful to have him be the first of our collective residents in the main stage programming.”
Noting that Ritchie-Jones’ “incredible physical aptitude and vigour” will be instantly recognisable to viewers of recent Stephanie Lake Company works in which he performed, such as The Chronicles (2025 Brisbane Festival), Hollingsworth is certain ADC’s audience will love CUDDLE.
“It’s absolutely brilliant,” Hollingsworth says. “It’s witty and incredibly ballistic. It’s chaotic, it’s dynamic, and it is very very funny.”
ADC’s final show planned for home soil in 2026 is Assembly, Vol. 2, a follow-up to its one-night-only cross-pollination of live movement and music at the Princess Theatre that closed the 2024 Brisbane Festival.
Another overseas tour is also in the works, but it will be more low-key than Bad Nature’s recent 36-date European showing that wrapped up 2025 with standing ovations.
A three-city tour to China in August-September will reboot ADC’s collaboration with Beijing Dance/LBTX following 2019 co-production Matrix. Hollingsworth says being able to regenerate the strong connection interrupted by the pandemic is “such a satisfying and heart-warming moment for me”.
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