When the performing arts intersect, interesting things can happen, particularly when that intersection involves Australasian Dance Collective and fashion designer Gail Sorronda.
That’s a creative marriage made in heaven. Designer Gail Sorronda has been collaborating on the Brisbane art scene for some years now, with spectacular results.
Sorronda and ADC artistic director and CEO Amy Hollingsworth are getting together again on August 20 for Calile Culture Presents: Cut From Movement, this time to talk about their creative endeavours as Part Six of the Calile Culture series – curated events, happenings, goings-on and conversations that connect our community and encourage engagement, appreciation, discourse and learning.
The series happens, as you guessed, at The Calile Hotel in James Street, Fortitude Valley. The hotel is becoming a bit of a hub for the creative arts.
Continuing the hotel’s longstanding kinship with creative institutions and organisations, this latest edition of the Calile Culture series honours the 40-year tenure of female-led innovation at Australasian Dance Collective – one of the nation’s leading contemporary dance companies – and the 20th anniversary of Gail Sorronda’s independent namesake label.
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ADC artist Lilly King for The Calile Hotel’s Calile Culture series. Photo: Libby Willis
Established in 1984 as Expressions Dance Company by Maggi Sietsma, the Brisbane-based ADC has created more than 190 works by 86 national and international choreographers. Harnessing the talent of an ensemble of six dancers, the company has achieved recognition through national awards, including three Helpmanns and three Australian Dance Awards.
Gail Sorronda is a defining figure in Australia’s independent fashion landscape, with 2025 marking 20 years of her eponymous label. Known for her evocative monochrome aesthetic and symbolic collections, Sorronda’s practice bridges contemporary art and fashion.
From collaborations with MONA, ADC and Queensland Ballet to feature stories in Vogue Italia and RUSSH, her work consistently blurs the boundaries between design and art. Worn by the likes of Winona Ryder, SZA, Lorde and Agathe Rousselle, each collection resists the fast and disposable, offering a vision of fashion that is fiercely imaginative, emotionally intelligent and unapologetically otherworldly.
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experience an evening of creative immersion intersecting the disciplines of choreography and costuming
For this Calile Culture event audiences are invited to experience an evening of creative immersion intersecting the disciplines of choreography and costuming. ADC company artists will open the evening with a special excerpt performance of Glass Teeth, originally created by leading choreographic voice Melanie Lane for ADC’s recent 40th anniversary season.
Lane’s Glass Teeth draws on an ancient belief of dreaming as a supernatural means of divine intervention, dancing through the uncanny nightmares and fantasies that we as humans are transported to when we sleep.
“Continuing the collective’s commitment to artistic collaboration, we were delighted that acclaimed Brisbane fashion icon Gail Sorronda designed the costumes for Glass Teeth, as she did for Natalie Weir’s The Dinner Party in 2019,” Hollingsworth says.
The audience at the Calile Culture event will be “transported through a terrain of surreality and absurdity, with the performance exploring the mythologies and architecture of dreamscapes and costumes by Gail Sorronda”.
Afterwards, Hollingsworth will join Sorronda with Lane and ADC company artist Lilly King for an in-conversation, hosted by Talisa Sutton – designer, creative consultant and art director at independent fashion magazine, RUSSH.
United by a commitment to bold expression and artistic innovation, the discussion will examine the role of creative collaboration, female stewardship and bold artistic vision in shaping legacies spanning disciplines and decades.
Calile Culture Presents: Cut From Movement, The Calile Hotel grand reception and amphitheatre, Fortitude Valley, August 20, 6pm-7.30pm.
eventbrite.com.au/e/calile-culture-cut-from-movement-tickets-1489799142339?aff=ebdsoporgprofile