Quindell Orton
Dance Artist
Quindell Orton is a dance artist based in Munich since 2016 (Germany since 2013), performing, researching, facilitating and making. They were born in Subiaco/Noongar Land (Whadjuk people are the traditional owners who’s land was never ceded, Australia). Quindell wanted to be an actress, then at an arts high school audition someone said ‘but look at those feet’ and since then she has been practising contemporary dance.
After graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, Quindell worked with the likes of Anna Konjetzky (DE), Superyoutour (DE), Moritz Ostruschnjak (DE), Chrissie Parrott (AU), Stefan Dreher (DE), Sebastian Hirn (DE), Evandro Pedroni (BR), Christiane Huber (DE), Lena Grossman (DE) and Oliver Zahn/Hauptaktion (DE) and is cofounder of site alternative company Anything Is Valid Dance Theatre (2008-2018). She has toured internationally (performing at Impulse, Augenblick mal, Reaktor Shanghai, Sommerszene Salzburg, Bipod Festival, Prisma Festival etc).
In their practice Quindell is interested in how theoretical discourse interacts with the body as a research and understanding tool. Their practice approaches the body as a porous and sentient entity situated in specific contexts and entangled in a larger ecosystem. They search for-specificity in the body, how the body can open up realms of association, and is continually searching how her practice actively relates to and can affect change in the status quo.
In 2021 Quindell created ‘Naming Fiction’, a co-authored work with Varinia Canto Vila, looking at fiction in it’s different forms, centrally looking at the socio-political fictions we construct and therefore have the power to reconstruct. Quindell worked with in Anna Konjetzky’s for ‘We Are Here’, Moritz Ostruschnjak for ‘Yester:now’ and Christiane Huber for ‘Wonder’ and ‘We Call Wonder’.
Quindell is a core member of research project the Nomadic Academy for the last 3 years and co-facilitates the Practice and Knowledge Sharing Program of the Playground which continues a line of research from the Nomadic Academy in the field of a queer, feminist discourse. Quindell has a research project ‘Practising Ruptures’ (funded by the City of Munich); creating studio practices and interventions in the public sphere that attempt to interrupt systems of oppression such as gender binarism, speciesism, capitalism, racism... Currently part of her research is focused on how care in working contexts can create more nourishing systems.
