DESERT HOTHOUSE

SAVE THE DATE • 1 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 lawn—explores sovereignty, self-determination, control, empathy, and mythmaking, 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.

  • Choreographers & Performers: Katina Olsen, Frankie Snowdon and Madeleine Krenek

    Collaborating Performers: Samakshi Sidhu, Ash Musk, Karlia Cook

    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

    Thought Leader: Art Oracle, Erica McCalman

    Creative Consultant: Angela Flynn

    Secondments: Karlia Cook (performer) & Vivienne Hargreaves (lighting)

  • This project has been supported by Creative Australia, Arts NT and the Australian Government through the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE).

    This project is in partnership with the Araluen Arts Centre.

  • WHITE LIES

    KATINA OLSEN

    Australia is built on the fiction of terra nullius. Sovereignty has never been ceded and Australia is the only Commonwealth country without a Treaty with First Nations peoples. Whilst some might inherit stolen wealth, others inherit intergenerational trauma. White Lies unearths a history of lies agreed upon enforced by the powerful and speculates a future zero-sum race to the bottom… unless we choose a more honest path. 

  • PUBLIC PROPERTY

    MADELEINE KRENEK

    Inspired by the grim spectacle of depression era dance competitions of the 1920s and 30s, Public Property delves into the primal human capacity for empathy, exploring how we connect (or distance ourselves) physically, emotionally, and unconsciously. The work invites the audience to engage directly with the unfolding spectacle, commodifying the exhaustion, risk, and emotional vulnerability in the performers, drawing parallels to our digital consumption of each other’s lives and erasure of the exploitation in our supply chains. 

  • A ROCK AND A SOFT PLACE

    FRANKIE SNOWDON

    Interrogating power, history, colonisation and the earth herself through the terrain and aesthetic of the female body. The work disarms audiences through a series of seemingly playful participatory activities, before the experience transforms into an alternate reality, in which the relationships of bodies to each other and the environment is vital to our evolution and survival. If we were between a rock and a soft place - where difficult truths that have shaped our world could be met with alternate pathways that centre the nuance and vulnerability of humanity  - could we choose to be better, wiser and empower ourselves to change course?

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