Katina Olsen
As a teen dancer, Katina Olsen (Wakka Wakka Kombumerri) was told she was “too tan” and endured her skin being patted down with light makeup to fit a more desirable classical aesthetic. Twenty-four years on, we see that same brown skinned Murri, Katina, navigating her time between Co-Artistic Directing Dance Makers Collective (DMC) and proudly gracing national and international stages as an Independent performer, choreographer and actor. Using her platform to disrupt the stagnated Western canon, performance and academy, she brings focus to elevating First Nations dance methodologies as a vehicle for climate justice.
Her trajectory as a maker and cultural activator has seen her forge her way through an often unassailable industry as an independent, especially a blak independent, to create work for over ten years including Mother’s Cry for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed 2018, movement direction for the play Sunshine Super Girl (Sydney Festival 2021) and Walking into the Bigness (Malthouse Theatre). Katina presented her Independent solo work namu nunar (mother, mountain, sky) at numerous festivals: Supercell, Yonder, Horizon, Festival 2018 and March Dance 2019. Katina has also collaborated and performed with DMC on Australian Dance Award nominated DADS, 2020 sold-out Sydney Festival show The Rivoli and most recently co-choreographed Woman’s Work with Anya McKee (Blacktown Arts Centre 2023 & Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre 2024).
Katina is currently developing her most significant contemporary dance work to date, Preparing Ground, with co-directors Marilyn Miller and Jasmin Sheppard. Initiated in 2019, the lifelong endeavour has been developing on Country with Elders and community since 2020. Produced by BlakDance, Preparing Ground is supported through the Major Festivals Initiative as a work of scale and is considered to be pushing the edges of what is possible as an Independent First Nations dance artist.
As well as regularly collaborating with major companies, small to medium organisations and Independent artists, Katina is also an alumni of Creative Australia 2022/23 Future Leaders, and BlakDance’s 2015 Dana Waranara and 2020 BlakForm programs.
She takes pride in informally mentoring a number of First Nations dance artists transitioning to the independent dance community and in doing so, sharing her knowledge with the next generation.
