Sue Healey

Sue Healey is a choreographer, educator, installation artist and filmmaker based in Sydney, Australia. Originally from New Zealand, Sue graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne with a BA (Dance Performance, 1984). She later gained a Masters Degree in Choreography (2000) with First Class Honours, from Melbourne University. She has recently been made an Honorary Fellow of the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Healey was a founding member of Danceworks Melbourne with Artistic Director Nanette Hassall performing and choreographing, nationally and internationally from 1983-1988.
From 1989-91 she worked in New York with Zvi Gottheiner Company and studied with many seminal artists including Trisha Brown, Dana Reitz, Irene Hultman and Merce Cunningham.
She was Artistic Director of Vis-à-Vis Dance Canberra (1993-95) and the Sue Healey Company from 2002. Her worked has toured to the United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan and New Zealand.

She was awarded the Choreographic Fellowship from the Australia Council (1999/2000) and the Robert Helpmann Scholarship, Arts NSW(2009/10). She has recently been awarded the highly prestigious Creative Fellowship of the Australia Council for 2013.

Experimenting with form and perception, Healey creates dance for diverse spaces: theatres, galleries and the camera. Her films have been finalists in major international film festivals and have been broadcast by Australian and European television networks. Healey is an acknowledged pioneer of dance on screen. Her films are widely acclaimed and have won many awards, screening in over 30 countries. Virtuosi (Healey's feature length documentary about 8 New Zealand dance artists) has screened in New York, Montreal, Amsterdam, Prague, Portugal, Berlin, Hobart, Auckland Arts Festival, DocEdge festival Wellington, American Dance Festival and many other international festivals in 2013/14. The film recently won an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film 2013 and a Silver ACS award for cinematographer Judd Overton. Her 3 channel installation version of Virtuosi premiered at Ten Days on the Island Festival, Tasmania in March 2013.

Healey works from her base in Sydney, creating choreography, film and visual design for a diverse range of companies and contexts. Projects for 2013/14 included Second Skin a work for 24 artists with disabilities; Luminocity a large scale site specific projection + choreography for the Faculty of the Built Environment UNSW; On View, Healey's major installation performance work in development for 2015 Carriageworks Sydney season; Double Entendre commission from The Australia Ensemble, Sydney; film/visual design for White Cloud a solo show for singer Tim Finn; and Film design for Red Shoes, Expressions Dance Company Brisbane.

Filmography

VIRTUOSI » Created by award-winning choreographer and dance film maker Sue Healey, with music by New Zealand jazz legend Mike Nock, Virtuosi is a feature length documentary about the drive to be an artist and the special nature of virtuosity in dance...