Festival Lab

Callum Joseph O'Reilly

Callum Joseph O'Reilly is a Perth based composer and multimedia artist. His work has been commissioned by numerous ensembles, including the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, Mix’t Trio, Perth Symphony Orchestra,  Australian Youth Orchestra, ANAM, Willoughby Symphony Orchestra,  Omega Ensemble, Flinders Quartet, Ensemble Offspring and Sydney  Symphony orchestra.  

Callum is an accomplished installation artist, with projects showcased at PICA and in Fujiyoshida, Japan. In 2025, Callum has written multiple commissions including for the Lime Cordiale Orchestra tour.  

ChuehKai Kuo  

Kuo Chueh-Kai is a Taiwanese contemporary dance choreographer and performer, co-founder of Nonly Body. Born in Chiayi, he trained at Tsoying High School of Dance and the National Taiwan University of Arts. From 2018 to 2024 he toured internationally with Hung Dance. His works merge contemporary dance with circus, martial arts, and acrobatics, exploring physical expression and audience dialogue. His solo Tame (2022) won the Audience Award at MASDANZA 2023, while Pua̍h-pue — Divination Blocks (2024) was presented at major festivals in Asia and nominated for the 23rd Taishin Arts Award.   

Delaney Brooklyn Burke 

Delaney Burke is a queer, emerging artist, dancer, puppeteer, and stage manager. In 2024 she completed her Bachelor of Performing Arts (Honours) at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, earning First Class Honours with her research into the female body in feminist performance. She has a special interest in interdisciplinary performance which includes visual storytelling and cabaret, with her background in dance and music strongly influencing her practice.  

Delaney also works as a dancer and neo-burlesque performer in the nightlife industry, and has worked with giant puppets on multiple occasions, at Woodford Folk Festival (QLD), and with Newcastle-based company Curious Legends. In September 2025 Delaney’s contemporary theatre show premiered at The Blue Room Theatre, on which Delaney worked as the lead artist and as a performer. Graeme Watson wrote that it was “the most profound and moving burlesque show I’ve ever seen” (OutInPerth, 2025).   

 Dayeon Lee 

Dayeon Lee is a dance theorist and art&tech choregrapher from South Korea who explores how emotion, movement, and AI can create new poetic languages of connection. She studied Dance Theory at Korea National University of Arts and built systems where human feelings met algorithmic intelligence. Her recent participatory project <i>Re:Choreograph</i> (2025, Suwon Cultural Foundation) invited audiences to experience how their emotions could be sensed, visualized, and rewritten through AI. She is drawn to moments where technology becomes intuitive and empathetic- when data can breathe like the body. Her research framework, “Human-Centered AI & Art (HCAA)”, seeks to reimagine how humans and machines can co-create meaning. She is passionate about artistic dialogue across disciplines and regions, especially within the Indian Ocean and Asian network.    

 Lea Šimić 

Lea Šimić was born and bred in the suburbs of Western Sydney. Her upbringing was a mix of Balkan rigour and late night dancing. These experiences showed her that the best way to connect people was through a good party. This became the premise of her new company, The Šimić Theatre Co. which aims to foster a space for artists to ‘make’ without permission. 

Lea’s own works are loud, fun and ultimately an archive of stories that sit in the in-between.  

Now, with a Bachelor of Performing Arts from WAAPA, Lea has developed and homed in on her skills as a collaborator, deviser, writer, marketeer, director and anything else that is asked of her! If you need her to learn a skill she can do it in 6 weeks or less... 

She recently played a female lead in Katzenmusik and was awarded the WAAPA Scholarship for Excellence. Lea uses theatre, music and dance to showcase the intergenerational issues that permeate the foundations of what Australia has been built on and works to emphasise voices that are either misplaced or forgotten within our society.

Ruvimbo Ruvarashe Tambiri 

Ruvimbo Ruvarashe Tambiri is a writer and arts-loved based in Perth, Western Australia. She has a deep interest in the complexities of human connection, using this as a basis of her creation. She is a poet and author of an unpublished self-help text for young adults. Her work draws on personal experience, observation, and cultural exploration to create writing that is both transformative and relatable. She is also a founder of an emerging arts organisation, Life Imitates, which aims to bring back third places through poetry, fashion, art and music. This space has been alive for over a year and is growing in love and dedication every day. She is deeply dedicated to the arts community.   

 Raras Sukardi  

 Raras is a wind instrumentalist, experimenting with improvised and noise music. Her Indonesian heritage shapes her identity, creating a deep sense of belonging and natural connection towards Asian culture, people and land. She feels inspired to explore soundworlds that are authentic and meaningful to her.  

On Raras' upcoming three night performance residency with ToneList, she is focusing on pushing boundaries of balance between melodic and harsh dissonant sounds. Inspired by both the ethnic/ traditional music and noise/ DIY music scene in Java where she travelled this year, she will explore this duality.  

Raras is currently engaged in clarinet teaching and is a key member of exploratory arts collective WWIM - who creates spaces for emerging artists to make interdisciplinary connections related to improvisation. She is also involved in a local community Gamelan ensemble. In 2025 she has performed for ToneList's Audible Edge Festival and will be doing sound for a STRUT creative development.     

 Rika Hamaeguchi 

Rika Hamaguchi is a proud First Nations woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, with strong ties to her Japanese heritage. 

A professional dancer for over a decade, Rika has been a senior artist with Bangarra Dance Theatre and has featured in Australian Dance Theatre’s multidisciplinary work Tracker. Her practice extends beyond the stage into film and photography, including appearances in Step into Paradise, a documentary for Australian fashion designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee. For several years, Rika has also been the face of Western Australia’s tourism campaign Walking on a Dream, broadcast nationally and internationally. 

Alongside performance, Rika is deeply passionate about storytelling across disciplines, with a particular interest in how textiles and movement shape and enhance narrative. Her first costume design commission was The Wild Between Stars for West Australian Ballet (2025). She has since worked as an associate costume designer on productions with Bangarra Dance Theatre and Ilbijerri Theatre Company, and has recently completed her costume design film debut on a short romantic comedy produced by Ramu Productions, set to premiere in 2026. 

Rika’s diverse experiences across dance, theatre, and film inform the considered creative vision she brings to every project. 

 Stirling Kain 

Stirling Kain (b. 1998) is an emerging photographer using experimental film and darkroom practices to speculate fictive worlds. Her practice is strongly influenced by nineteenth-century photographic workflows (wet plate collodion), and twelfth-century monastic mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Kain improvises props and sets as subjects for her tintype and ambrotype prints, splintering historical photographic techniques with contemporary film practices. She is interested in idiosyncrasy, iconolatry, and ephemera as throughlines to communion between art object and viewer.  

Kain has exhibited locally and nationally since 2023. She graduated with a Bachelor of Art (History of Art maj., History min.) from the University of Western Australia in 2020. In April 2025, she undertook her first solo exhibition <i>I poured out honey</i> at CURRENT artist-run-initiative. Kain has forthcoming artist residencies at PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Art) and Light Works artist space. As an arts worker, she produces art festivals and events.  

Xin Ong  

Based in Boorloo, Xin Ong is an emerging interdisciplinary artist with a practice of deep listening and conversational co-creation. She completed her BPA (Hons) 1st class (WAAPA/ECU, 2023) with practice-led research on holding space for peak performance and psychological safety within interdisciplinary collaboration. Through i² (@i2installation), Xin produces immersive performance works spanning stage, film, and interactive installation with an emphasis on audience engagement. Pilot (2022), presented with PS as Studio 7 Artist in Residence, enabled audiences to co-create audiovisuals during live performance via mobile app. Splice (2024, with Fremantle Theatre Company) explored post-performance discussion models to build networks for navigating life's choices. 

In 2025, Xin launched in³ (@in3.incube), a platform for international artistic exchange. Its inaugural program, INITIATE with Jiří Pokorný (NDT, Kidd Pivot), invites performance-makers across disciplines to engage with contemporary dance tools. Xin advocates for the arts as essential to health and connection.   

Each year, the Lab cohort is facilitated by an established artist. This Navigator acts a mentor and guide, aiding the Lab cohort in critical enquiry, discussions, and engagement with the Festival program and visiting artists.   

We are extremely excited to invite Jeff Khan to be our Navigator for the 2026 festival. Jeff is an internationally respected curator, writer and arts leader based in Naarm/Melbourne Australia. He is currently Creative Director of Asia TOPA: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts, at Arts Centre Melbourne. In 2025 he led the return of Asia TOPA after a 5-year hiatus, reimagining the festival and bringing together over 400 artists and collectives from across the region to attract over 750,000 audience members. 

Jeff works at the intersection of performance, dance, visual art and sound, collaborating closely with artists to explore the potential of performance to imagine new futures and bring people together across borders and difference. In his previous role as Artistic Director & CEO of Performance Space (Warrane/Sydney), Jeff curated and oversaw the annual Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, as well as a year-round program of artist development, residencies, and international exchange.  

Jeff’s recent curatorial work is focused on the Asia Pacific is particularly engaged with exigent issues in the region, from queer and feminist conversations to artists’ responses to environmental, political, and intercultural complexities. Jeff has previously held positions and Guest Curatorships at the Fusebox Festival (USA), Next Wave Festival, Gertrude Contemporary, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. He has participated on juries and assessment panels for the Taishin Art Award (Taiwan); Create NSW; Creative Australia/Australia Council for the Arts; Creative Victoria; Arts Northern Rivers, and many more.