Artist, Performer, Songwriter
Ian has been working as a professional performer and trainer in music and theatre, in Australia and overseas, for 30 years. He has worked with a range of adult, youth and children's groups for the purpose of personal development or simply the joy of active, creative expression. Much of the work has been at a community arts and non-government level. A significant range of projects has also occurred in mainstream and alternative education. This has seen him involved with many special needs groups from the aged to "at risk" kids, physically and mentally disabled participants, and with behaviour and anger management projects.
He uses a range of performance skills, particularly sound-scape, movement/dance, "body-work", mime, theatre sports and mask work as a call to participants, to reveal themselves as they choose to be seen. Sound-scape, for example, allows anyone to experience and take part in the fundamentals of music making. Ian honours highly skilled musicianship, but hopes to clear the myth that skill is the same as joining in. His approach to movement/dance and "body-work" is the same. How to get people involved before their fears and reservations make their decision for them. Ian's work is immediately character building and geared to personal growth, while avoiding being precious about such things. He shows how we perform our lives and how we can change our role at any time.
Performing arts training, for Ian, is not only a means of unlocking and communicating issues and experiences for participants. It also creates life- affirming and self-esteem strategies in a way that very few media can. His aim is to help people negotiate "risk" with greater comfort and confidence. To circumvent self-defeating images participants have of themselves or others. To that end, an astonishing array of workshop formats is available for almost any kind of event.
Take a journey with him . . .
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