Katrina is an award-winning Naarm (Melbourne) based interdisciplinary artist, director, choreographer, producer and facilitator. A graduate of the Australian Ballet School, she performed in companies in Australia and abroad before returning home to undertake further studies including a Bachelor of Education, specialising in Dance and Drama and a PhD in Contemporary Arts (Deakin University 1994 and 2001).
Creating New Work
Her studies and work across diverse arts forms (visual arts, writing, object theatre, dance and film) are embedded into her dynamic collaborative projects with communities, an area of her practice she has been refining for 30 years. In this work, she creates spaces where the imagination flourishes, expressive forces are harnessed and dynamic exchanges occur. This is captured in works such as Stupendous; Dancing Through Parkinson’s (2017), The Archivists (2016), Mean Feat (2015) and Embrace (2001).
Rank’s work explores contemporary challenges through poetic form and satire. Her ensemble work The Right (2019) with Fine Lines Dance investigated the notion of sacrifice for the greater good. Through the lens of contemporary politics, it asked:’What does it take to follow your convictions and make change? Must you change who you are? Must you play the game?’ In 2020, Fine Lines won an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community Dance for The Right. Her work, Artefact (2023) with Fine Lines Dance and Angelina Nicole as part of the Tempus season, is also a satire. It comments on contemporary pressures to create artefacts and communicate the essence of new work in order to engage audiences early and excite funding bodies, even before a work is made.
In 2016 her practice pivoted to the incorporation of recycled materials that would otherwise go to landfill. She initially worked with paper (manufacturing end roll) in the set design of Tales of the Pebbleverse (2017). This led to its upcycling combined with illuminated headpieces made with plastic water bottles in the creation of The Archivists (2018). In 2018 she began exploring the possibilities of single-use soft plastics, which where then freely distributed with every shopping purchase. This led to Birdwatching (2019) and Bird (2021) and Creature (2022), works that demonstrate a deep and evolving engagement as an activist through exuberant costume design and imaginative fiction. Works that progress this agenda and build on her creative innovations include: Zombie Apocalypse Wildlife Spring Catalogue (creative development 2024) and Red Dress (2024 with Canberra based GOLD Company), both works explore the fall-out of fast fashion and micro-plastics human absorption over time. This highly eclectic interdisciplinary work requires Rank to explore movement processes that allow the materials to speak and to be an equal part in the creative process (as opposed to a costume as a post-choreographic feature). This is stimulating and challenging work that requires a significant shift in choreographic and performative approaches.
Teaching Practice
Rank is an award-winning dance educator, receiving the Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance Education in 2018. She has taught in formal contexts such as primary, secondary, tertiary education and vocational training as well as trained and untrained dancers across all ages, abilities, backgrounds, including those with physical, cognitive and mental health conditions. She is one of Australia’s four certified Dance for Parkinson’s certified and accredited teacher and holds ongoing teaching registration with the Victorian Institute of Teaching. Her broad and detailed teaching experience, plus her love of teaching, have resulted in a highly nuanced teaching pedagogy that focuses on mature and elderly dancers, with particular reference to dancers who undertook dance training and professional work in their youth.
Rank’s deep commitment to teaching and community development is evidenced through Fine Lines Dance and Dance for Parkinson’s.
In 2013, she founded Fine Lines, contemporary dance classes for experienced, mature dancers. Fine Lines was created to challenge stereotypes and assumptions about what, how, where and when older dancers could do and say. At the time of its inception, there were no ongoing opportunities for older dancers that spoke to a serious dance practice. Fine Lines provided a place where mature artists could continue to grow artistically and creatively. Weekly classes led to showings and regular performance seasons, all produced by Rank herself, with some funding support from local government.
Fine Lines continues to offer Friday and Tuesday contemporary classes, workshops, showings and performances. Other Fine Lines Dances have started their own classes, offering further opportunities for our community. For more information, please go to: https://www.finelinesdance.com.au
In 2014 Katrina founded her first Dance for Parkinson’s class offering weekly dance classes for people with neurological and musculoskeletal conditions. In 2018 she began another Dance for Parkinson’s class in Darebin which is currently located at the Reservoir Senior Citizens Centre.
