DESERT HOTHOUSE
SAVE THE DATE • 31st July - 2nd August 2026
3 new full length works choreographed by Katina Olsen, Madeleine Krenek and Frankie Snowdon under the Desert Hothouse banner.
Desert Hothouse is a bold, multi-platform dance event that brings together 26 exceptional artists, creatives, and arts workers in Mparntwe/Alice Springs from June to August 2026. Three new full-length works will be premiered under the Desert Hothouse banner, a dynamic three-day takeover of the Araluen Arts Centre precinct. This triptych of performances - staged across the theatre, gallery, and Aviation Museum carpark - explores sovereignty, self-determination, control, empathy, and myth-making, forming a powerful collective experience that invites reflection and action. The event will be interspersed with platforms for being together in conversation, sharing food and ideas, and celebrating the culmination of 6 years of design and development.
Desert Hothouse is more than a performance season—it’s a communal moment to process the present and imagine a more empowered, interconnected future.
Tickets on sale soon.
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Choreographers & Performers: Katina Olsen, Frankie Snowdon and Madeleine Krenek
Collaborating Performers: Ash Musk, Karlia Cook, Bella Waru, Kady Mansour, Tara Robertson
Sound Composition/Design: Serina Pech and Anna Whitaker
Lighting, Spatial and Set Design: Jen Hector
Design Consultant for Public Property: Elliat Rich
Video Artist: Samuel James
Dramaturge: Ash Musk
Creative Producer: Frances Robinson
Production Management: Triptic Event Management
Thought Leader: Art Oracle, Erica McCalman
Creative Consultant: Angela Flynn
Secondments: Karlia Cook (performer) & Vivienne Hargreaves (lighting)
Other previous contributors
Choreography and performance: Samakshi Sidhu, Luci Young
Dramaturgy for territory: Declan Furber-Gillick
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Desert Hothouse is presented by GUTS Dance // Central Australia in partnership with the Araluen Arts Centre. Desert Hothouse is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. GUTS Dance is supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation and receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
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WHITE LIES
KATINA OLSEN
Australia (as we know it) is built on the legal fiction of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one, the basis of the British claim to possession of Australia). Sovereignty has never been ceded and Australia is the only Commonwealth country without a Treaty with their First Nations peoples.
Many of these policies have affected Katina and others' own ancestors directly and have left lasting effects on the systemic and cultural landscape we know, understand, operate within and still benefit from today. Whilst some might inherit stolen wealth, others inherit intergenerational trauma. White Lies attempts to show the disparity between truth and a lie and one version of history versus another whilst asking: “if we muzzle the truth of the land and its people, how are we to learn and understand how to care for it and live within it?”.
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PUBLIC PROPERTY
MADELEINE KRENEK
Inspired by the grim spectacle of depression era dance competitions of the 1920s and 30s, Public Property reflects on the darker side of human entertainment, showcasing suffering and endurance for public spectacle.
In a contemporary context, it critiques the ongoing commodification of risk and vulnerability through the digital exposure of people's lives, increasingly available for human consumption and public commentary. With a particular focus on the often invisible and undervalued labour of women, the work also draws parallels between historical and modern forms of exploitation.
Through layered physicality, absurdity, spectacle and real time choreography, Public Property challenges traditional spectatorship, inviting the audience to question their complicity - implicating you in the spectacle of endurance, emotional vulnerability, and exhaustion on display.
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TERRITORY
FRANKIE SNOWDON
territory is an immersive performance that exposes and calls into question the complicity, ignorance and subjugation of humans throughout history. In an effort to understand belonging, and using the body as a critical tool for interrogating complex questions, the work reckons with the concept of territory as something to be claimed and controlled.
Developed and performed by 3 dancers with distinct cultural, socio-policital, embodied histories, the dance moves through states of creation, cognisance, occupation, defiance, reclamation and triumph. By framing land as body, and bodies as countries, territory brings the decisions often made on our behalf by those in power into our personal control, asking us to reflect on the difficult truths that have shaped our world and how we might embolden ourselves and our communities to challenge these paradigms for a more hopeful future.