Composer Mentor – Rachael Dease

Dease’s artistic practice encompasses art music, film and theatre scoring, installation and songwriting.

Graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, she won the inaugural Martin Sims Award at Fringe World, the Melbourne Fringe Music Award and received critical acclaim at New York Fringe Festival for her contemporary song cycle City of Shadows. Her composition and sound design for theatre include the Helpmann Award-nominated It’s Dark Outside (The Last Great Hunt), Sunset (Strut Dance/Maxine Doyle) The Bleeding Tree (Blue Room Theatre) and Rest (WAYTCO). Installation includes Black Mass (PICA) Winter Feast 2018 & 2019 (Dark Mofo), Museum of Water (Perth Festival), and Like Embracing Ice (Fremantle Arts Centre). Dease was awarded the 2017 Department of Culture and The Arts Performing Arts Fellowship, won the Performing Arts WA Award for Best Music for Let The Right One In (BSSTC) and has been a Besen Fellow at Malthouse Theatre. Residencies include PICA, Proximity Festival, Lumen Studios Italy and The Arctic Circle. In 2020 Dease was Prelude Composer In Residence at Gallop House, Western Australia where she wrote her first solo album Hymns for End Times which was performed with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in February 2021 for Perth Festival. Dease has recently returned to Perth after collaborating with Maxine Doyle and Es Devlin on Here Not Here for Gothenburg Opera Dance Company

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“A striking performer with a commanding voice… Mesmerizing, intelligent and effective”
— The Huffington Post

Here not Here

“Here not Here” is created in close collaboration with the dancers in GöteborgsOperans Danskompani and has an original score by Australian composer Rachael Dease. Costume design by Bregje van Balen and light design by in-house Joakim Brink and David Stokholm.