Choreographer, dancer and artist Shelley Lasica has built an oeuvre and a career by following her own particular set of creative coordinates.

By Dan Rule SEP 2015

Dance was never a canned or cautious gesture for Shelley Lasica. Her understanding of the body in movement was not tied to inevitable tropes, tenets or histories. Growing up under the guidance of her mother Margaret Lasica – a celebrated choreographer and educator who founded Modern Dance Ensemble in 1967, and was widely regarded as one of the formative voices of modern dance in Australia – she has always understood dance in terms of its potentials and possibilities.

“Quite often when I was young, my mother’s company would rehearse at our house,” she recalls smilingly. “So I would sit in at rehearsals and just take it all in.”

Indeed, the creative machinations of dance – the very practice – rather than the outcomes were all around, ripe for observation, study and personal interpretation. “I made my first work when I was 16,” she says. “Unlike all of my contemporaries, I didn’t go through the ballet world and I never wanted to be a dancer in other people’s work. I started choreographing work when I was really young and my mum always really encouraged me to do that.”

We’re sitting in the dark confines of The European, at the Parliament end of the Melbourne CBD, Lasica’s characteristically elegant shock of curls springing with every description and reminiscence. “There were always books around too,” she recalls, pausing for a moment as if to savour the thought. “So I soon got the idea that there was scholarship attached to all this as well. I realised that dance wasn’t just ... Subscribe to read this article in full