Stompin Youth Dance Company

About Stompin

Stompin lives by the motto: art/youth/community 4ever. We’re a community of creative young people between the ages of 13-30 and professional dancers, artists, choreographers and producers and who come together as equal co-collaborators to create and present unforgettable performance experiences in ordinary and extraordinary places.


Photo: Jasper Da Seymour

Based in Launceston, Tasmania and now in it’s 23rd year, Stompin creates an environment in which young people grow, as individuals and as citizens, through their connection with dance.

We’re committed to generating site-specific contemporary dance that explores the concerns and ideas of the people making, performing and watching it, as well as the art form of dance itself. Our work is underpinned by the exploration of issues that are important to young Tasmanians right now.

Stompin works to create a strong, supportive community, a safe outlet for creativity and a mechanism to promote social, emotional and physical wellbeing for regionally based young people.


Photo: Peter Manchester

About The Project

The Stompin Youth Choreographic Project (SYCP) gives young Tasmanians the opportunity to collaborate with local, national and international professional choreographers and dance artists to develop their own choreographic voice and create their own short works to be presented to the public.

This project will welcome 15 budding young Tasmanian dance artists to work with respected Melbourne based choreographer Alice Lee Holland in a two-week choreographic intensive at the Stompin Studio.

SYCP provides a rare opportunity for young people to extend themselves beyond formal dance training and have direct contact and practice with choreographic concepts and experiences. Participants are encouraged to explore their creative ideas in any way interests to them.


Photo: courtesy Junction Arts Festival

The SYCP has had a track record of success with two previous iterations, in 2012 with Stompin Artistic Director Emma Porteus and in 2013 with Belgium based choreographer Eleanor Bauer. The SYCP has directly engaged 25 young people as choreographers and dancers, and hundreds of audience members, with some performance outcomes featured in Launceston based international arts festival Junction Arts Festival.


Photo: courtesy Junction Arts Festival

We invite exciting Australian choreographers who have an interesting studio practice and a passion for working with young people to conduct a two-week choreographic intensive, sharing their practice and mentoring the Stompin dancers in the making their own dance work. This project serves as a way to keep Stompin connected to national and international trends in dance, and as a way to refresh our collective of dance artists who are interested in contributing as guest artists on our major shows.


Photo: Sarah McCormack

SYCP is a great way to up-skill our dancers. Our dancers are the choreographers of our shows. The more skills our dancers have, the more they are able to contribute fully to our unique artistic processes. The need for this project is threefold:

1. It is a vehicle to connect us to current national trends in dance, and allows us to provide an employment and skills development opportunity for a young and emerging choreographer.

2. It provides skill development and performance experience for a group of creative but regionally isolated young artists.

3. It feeds back into Stompin’s creative process by fostering a rigorous and innovative choreographic practice in our dancers.

Our 2015 Supporters

All funds raised during this campaign will ensure that this years Stompin Youth Choreographic Project can be realised. It will ensure that young Tasmanians can have the opportunity to develop and explore their creative choreographic voice, extend their own artistic practice and expose audiences to new and bold ideas.

This project is part of Arts Tasmania's Crowbar program, which will match donations we receive up to $2,000 if we are successful with this campaign.

You can see the specifics below. But in short, the funds will go towards bringing an dance artist to Tasmania and covering their artist fee, accommodation, travel and living costs as well as the production costs for the presentation of the short works.

Artist Fee $2,000

Artist Accommodation $1,400

Artist Return flight Melbourne- Launceston-$200

Artist Living away from home allowance @ $350 per week- $700

Production/Lighting/Sound- $750

Costuming/props/sets- $750

Pozible Service Fee- $200

Total = $6,000

The biggest challenge we face is that without the success of this Pozible Campaign, the Stompin Youth Choreographic Project for this year will not be able to go ahead. Each year the SYCP is a much-anticipated project with growing interest locally and nationally. Without funding we won’t be able to continue to educate and train the next generation of Tasmanian dance artists and the opportunity will be missed for these young people to have their choreographic voices heard and for audiences to be exposed to new art practices and ideas that will ultimately extend Tasmanian arts culture.

Stompin operates with government and philanthropic funding, however, the SYCP falls outside of what is achievable with our core funding so each year we need to seek alternative fund to deliver this extremely important program. We present the SYCP for free to audiences and for free to dancers to participate- allowing the project and Stompin to remain accessible to all young people, and to audiences.

We have proven in the past iterations of this project in 2012 and 2013 that this is successful and fulfilling project for participants and audiences alike. We have received overwhelming reports of personal and artistic growth of participants as well as rave reviews from audience members.