Our Director, Emma Irvine together with, Event Manager Sian Gavros have worked alongside each other in the industry for the last 7 years.

This is WHAT WE DO BEST!

Our company has built a 25 + location wide network for performing arts in South Australia.
We have also worked in many other performing arts events and programmes delivering vocal, dance and theatre.

Our core values and purpose has led us to the Schools Challenge event, being ‘inspiring people through the performing arts’.

In talking to many teachers who haven’t yet found the right program to be involved in, we have listened, and WE ARE HERE!

In being a part of the Schools Challenge, you will be cared for with the biggest hearts in the biz!

Emma Irvine

Director

Emma began her performing arts journey in 1991 at the age of six, enrolling at a local dance school on the Fleurieu Peninsula where she learnt dance for the next 11 years and in 2000 became an assistant dance teacher at the school.

She was a co-ordinator of many dance programmes through secondary school years choreographing Eisteddfods, dance productions and concerts. Emma was also a youth leader for a government programme, Active8. Through this group she travelled interstate to conferences working with youth and leadership. She also had the opportunity to work with various arts organisations such as Carclew Youth Arts, Country Arts SA and AIT Arts while with the Active8 programme.

In October of 2003 at 18 years of age, Emma registered her own business known as DanceSA. Our company DanceAUS Group, has built a 30 + location wide network for performing arts in South Australia with a national network plan on the horizon.

Emma also founded and directed the Adelaide Festival Centre’s On Stage holiday performing arts programme in its first three years.

"Creating an opportunity for thousands of students, who are able to experience the benefits of performing arts is aligned with my purpose and amongst my greatest achievements. I continuously strive to further my knowledge in the performing arts, events and business management through courses and specialised coaching."

Sian Gavros

Event Manager

Sian was first introduced to dance at age 3. She started with ballet, then added jazz, tap, contemporary, hip hop, musical theatre and Brazilian samba to her repertoire.

Sian successfully completed SACE dance and gained a Certificate IV in Dance in 2012. She has worked with international choreographers and was invited to audition for Cirque Du Soleil in Montreal and the Australian Ballet School. Sian has completed and passed all Cecchetti exams up to Advanced 1 and is currently studying to undertake the Cecchetti teachers exam. You can see Sian dancing with Brazilian Dance Fusion, performing in floor shows and at events across the state.

2019 marks 10 years of teaching for Sian and she loves working with students of all ages to make their dreams a reality. She teaches at multiple dance schools and in primary schools as well as teaching dance programmes at the Adelaide Festival Centre. Sian cannot wait to see stories come alive with the Schools Challenge!

Josh Smart

Technical Consultant

Josh is qualified in Live Production and Technical Services, Business Management and Leadership through Adelaide College of the Arts, UniSA and Scouts Australia. Josh is trained in First Aid, Mental Health First Aid, Responding to Abuse and Neglect, Rigging, Work Health and Safety and Training and Assessment.

Josh is currently Production Manager for Central Audio Visual, based at Adelaide Oval. Josh has experience working at Country Arts SA, AJ Sound, Tatachilla Lutheran College, and Brighton Secondary School.

Josh operates Smart Event Management, an event consulting, audio visual production and live streaming business which operates Australia-wide for clients such as the Department of Defence, Westpac, and Scouts Australia.

Josh is a member of Business SA and the Professional Conference Organisers Association, and volunteers with Scouts SA as Assistant Chief Commissioner (Events) and the National Training Team.

Joshsmart.au | smarteventmanagement.com.au

Sean Riley

Appraiser

Sean Riley is an award-winning playwright & director, and is considered one of Australia's leading creators of theatre for and by young people.  His most recent work, This Bloody House, premiered in 2018. Grave Child, premiered at the 2017 DreamBig Festival by SAYarts in association with S.A History Trust.  His play, Aftershocks toured metropolitan schools in 2016, and  Warren, was premiered by SAYarts in September 2014.

Prior to this, The Visitors and One by One; Urban Myth Theatre Company for Come Out 2013.  His plays Skip Miller’s Hit Songs, and Also a Mirror, were premiered by Brink Productions and Urban Myth Theatre Company respectively, for the 2011 Adelaide Fringe Festival.  In 2008, his play The Angel and the Red Priest premiered at the 2008 Adelaide Festival of the Arts.

His play for young audiences, Beautiful Words was premiered by Oddbodies Theatre Company to enormous critical acclaim in May 2006, winning the Adelaide Theatre Guide’s Award for Best Dramatic Production of the 2005/06  season and the Adelaide Theatre Critic’s Award for Best New Play. Prior to its opening, Beautiful Words won the Jill Blewett Playwrights Award in 2004 and was short-listed for the Patrick White Playwrights Award. The play was  published by Currency Press in May 2008, and is on the SACE reading list.

Lina Limosani

Appraiser

Lina has been recognised by The Advertiser magazine as a ‘choreographer among the most interesting of the crop of independent artists working in Australian dance.’ Dance Australia has described her as having ‘an original theatrical voice.’ Her works have been critically acclaimed as ‘aesthetically stunning’ InDaily, ‘Intelligent, captivating’ The Guardian, and ‘Highly original.’ The Wee Review. Her distinctive voice marks her as one of Australia’s brightest female choreographers. She is an international artist residing in Adelaide.

Lina has had an outstanding career as a dancer, director, and choreographer. An original member of Garry Stewart’s Australian Dance Theatre, she quickly championed the intense and athletic physicality before embracing an international performance career that has seen her tour to the Americas, Canada, Asia, Europe, and the UK with some of the world’s most established dance companies and independent choreographers; Lucy Guerin, Chunky Move, Narelle Benjamin, New Zealand Dance Company and Brink Theatre, Scotland’s David Hughes Dance, Al Seed, Cathy Marston, Plan B (Scot), Oceanallover (Scot) and Micha Purucker (Germ).

A master storyteller. Under the banner of Limosani Projekts, her works demonstrate her outstanding abilities for creating theatrically potent dance works.  Her courageous nature and imaginative mind have allowed her to carve a body of critically acclaimed work that is both compelling and accessible to audiences. She has been commissioned to create new work by the Australian Ballet, Australian Dance Theatre, and New Zealand Dance Company and initiated and led several highly successful international collaborations that have received national and international awards and nominations. She has forged an international reputation for her exquisite handling of stories that need to be told through work, presented at theatres and festivals worldwide.

A career highlight has been her hit The Spinners, a collaboration with Glasgow’s visual theatre director Al Seed, which had sell-out seasons at the Adelaide Dance Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it was nominated for a Total Theatre Award for Dance and selected as one of the Top 10 BEST DANCE WORKS presented in the UK in 2018.

Lina has two new works in the making; Barbaros - an interdisciplinary collaboration that draws on the ambiguous relationship between civilsation and barbarism, and What Lurks on the Edge - a contemporary dance and magic collaboration inspired by Charles Perrault's 17th Century horror-folktale Blue Beard.