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MIC Toi Rerehiko presents two multimedia installations Reading the Body (2009) and The Door, the Chair, the Bed and the Stair (2010), plus a selection of dance films (2003-10) by Sue Healey.

These works will be on display at MIC Gallery 321 K Road from 15 October - 11 December as part of the TEMPO 10 Dance Festival.

Healey, originally from Auckland, has been a key innovator in the Australian contemporary dance scene for more than two decades, as a performer, choreographer, educator and dancefilm maker. Experimenting with form and perception, Healey creates dance for diverse spaces; theatres, galleries, specific sites and the camera. She has created dance in many contexts as a commissioned choreographer for Australian and international companies and as an independent artist with her own projects.

Healey began a degree in Science at Auckland University, New Zealand, before moving to Melbourne to train at Victorian College of the Arts in 1981. She graduated with a BA (Dance Performance) in 1983 and later a Masters Degree (Choreography) from Melbourne University.

She was a founding member of the iconic Melbourne company Danceworks performing and choreographing with the company from 1983 to 1988. Since that time her work has been presented extensively in Australia - including the Sydney Opera House and The Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne and tours to United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, China and Japan. Recent tours include As You Take Time (performance installation) International Festival of Media and Arts in Yokohama, Japan, November 2009. Recent awards include II Coreografo Elettronico, Napolidanza, Italy, Best Dance Film, Australian Dance Awards 2008 and the Robert Helpmann Scholarship 2009. Sue Healey is supported by Managing and Producing Services (MAPS) NSW, a joint initiative supported by the Australia Council and Arts NSW and managed by Performing Lines.

Reading the Body is a single screen / 2 channel installation that juxtaposes the poem of the same name (by New Zealand poet Jenny Bornholdt) with a dance film by Healey. The installation offers a cinematic and spatial rendering of the poem, through choreographed movement and animation. What are the  ollaborative narrative possibilities between text and movement? How can text influence the 'reading' of the movement language? Both text and moving image are screened simultaneously,from two different angles, onto a suspended screen. The angle and placement of the viewer in relation to the screen, determines whether text or film is observed. The audience moves to encounter both the poem and the dance. Reading the Body premiered in Sydney and Amsterdam in 2010.

The Door, the Chair, the Bedand the Stair (2010), was commissioned by SEAM: Spatial Phrases, an international symposium of Architecture/Dance/Film in Sydney 2009. Four films placing the body in distinct architectural settings are projected onto multiple screens that distort and disrupt the picture plane surface. The result is a mesmerising meditation on space, rhythm and form.

"Without a doubt, Sue Healey is one of the most innovative and prolific Australian independent dance makers of the last twenty years.. .this work (The Door; the Chair; the Bed and the Stair) is exciting, thought-provoking and poetic. "
Martin del Amo, Ausdance Journal Summer edition 2009.

"Sue Healey is a masterful filmmakec choreographer and performance-maker".
Pauline Manley, Realtime lssue 94, 2009.

"An intricate, engrossing multimedia dance experience. "
Keith Gallasch Realtime lssue 81, 2007.

"A most fluent integration of dance, art and cinema.. .offers a revelation which only cinema could give us, as well as finely balanced beauty and an articulate and sensitive dance".
Karen Pearlman, Realtime lssue 97, 2010.