Alison Whittaker & Katina Olsen

In this piece, Alison Whittaker, poet, and Katina Olsen, dancer, present this incredible collaboration for the first day of Room to Dream.

Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi multitasker. As a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Her debut poetry collection, Lemons in the Chicken Wire, was awarded the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship. Alison was the co-winner of the 2017 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for Many Girls White Linen and was the Indigenous Poet-In-Residence for the 2018 Queensland Poetry Festival. Her latest book is Blakwork.

Katina Olsen is a proud Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri woman and also has Norwegian, German and English Ancestry. Choreographic highlights include namu nunar for Supercell Festival 2020, movement direction for the ABC series Cleverman 2 and Malthouse’s Walking into the Bigness. Katina created Min Min for QUT’s 2017 Graduation and choreographed Mother’s Cry for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed 2018.