curriculum vitae
Zsuzsi Soboslay has a practice in theater and movement, teaching expressive improvisation and uncovering stories, songs and histories that haven’t yet been told. She specialises in collaborative work across disciplines and has a special interest in the stories of immigrants and refugees, as well as experience of place. Her joy is in helping people recognise and move what is in them and around them, becoming aware of the dialogue and support this gives. Having suffered traumatic injury in 2002, she is well aware of many people’s longing to move and just what is possible in spite of limitations and injury.
She has been an arts writer for over 20 years; works as a director and mentor via the Street Theatre; won an inaugural Artists-in-Schools—Early Childhood residency (ACT) and other Residencies at Bundanon Artists’ Colony,
Canberra Dance Theater and the National Film and Sound Archive, and has choreographed community and outdoors dance/theatre work in Sydney, Canberra, Lake George, Tidbinbilla National Park, and on the beaches of Wollongong. In 2013 she began teaching mixed abilities classes for Canberra Dance Theater and for Belconnen Community Services.
In 2015, she is in preparation for her major theatre project, Anthems and Angels, with a performance development in April at the Street Theatre, Canberra [funded by ArtsACT]
She then takes up an Australia Council Community Partnerships-funded secondment with Entelechy Inclusive Theatre Company in London [May-August]; an Artists’ Residency at Parramatta City Artist Studios, and act as artistic adviser/facilitator with the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project.
She will also seed collaborations for The Welcome Project: inter-city performance collaboration on the situation of refugees.
In 2009 she began a long-term collaboration with Synergy Percussion (Sydney), and helped them achieve the ABC Limelight Award for Best Concert in 2011. They are currently in preparation for their 40th Anniversary Concert, Xenakis vs. Pateras, Carriageworks, Sydney, April 22-23 2014.
Recent performances include a solo dance-biography of the life of Jane Avril (a favorite of Toulouse-Lautrec) for the National Gallery; Dance Ecology work (in collaboration with Holly Diggle, musician Richard Johnson, and artist Tony Sweeting) for Dance/Science week at the CSIRO;
short flat long black/white, a refugee cabaret with Somebody’s Aunt (You Are Here, and Smith’s Bookshop, for refugee week); Under Milk Wood at The Street Theatre; and Anthems and Angels, on land/soundscape, memory and exile, a performance installation with Synergy Percussion and film-maker Mike Chin, scheduled for 2014.
Zsuzsi was recently accredited with Action Learning Associates UK as an Action Learning facilitator. She has worked as a bodywork therapist and counsellor for over 20 years, currently running clinic and workshops in Canberra, Sydney and Wollongong. She is enrolled in a PhD on “Ecologies of Inclusion” via Monash University, creating a large-scale performance on the experience of post-WWII refugees to Australia, in collaboration with visual artists and musicians. Zsuzsi is also setting up The Welcome/
Unwelcome Project on the current situation for refugees.