Lift

Lift began through a deeply reflective process, revisiting my own history as a dancer across diverse styles, including classical ballet. My conversations with former Australian Ballet Principal Artist Lisa Bolte became central to the work's development. We spoke about ballet not only as a technique but as a lived experience—how it shapes the body, imagination, and sense of self over time.

Lisa features in the video as a mature and seasoned artist, bringing a depth of experience rarely seen in representations of ballet. Her presence challenges narrow ideas of who gets to perform ballet and how it is seen. Her dance voice—both literal and metaphorical—guided the work as we considered how the form might evolve beyond the traditional image of the ballerina.

Lift is an interactive video and motion-capture work that invites audiences to experience a sensation often hidden within the form: the feeling of weightlessness. Ballet trains the body to lift, extend, and reach beyond its limits—calling on imagination as much as physical strength.

Through performance, editing, and movement, Lift draws on embodied memory and lived experience. It invites reflection on how the language of ballet might continue to move—through time, through bodies, and through the traces it leaves behind.

Reflection by Lisa Bolte

Working with Anne, whose creative ideas are so distinctive and evocative, invited me into a deeply collaborative process at a pivotal time in my life—when I had stepped away from my professional career with The Australian Ballet. It was a transition, and Anne's vision offered me a new way to explore movement, stillness, and presence.

When I look at the video, I feel an endless, quiet sense of gratitude. The work holds space for stillness and reflection. It captures something both fragile and powerful in the passage of time.

When I first met Anne Scott Wilson, she was intent on creating art that embodied metamorphosis. From the beginning, she spoke of ideas and images that evoked the Dying Swan or a butterfly slowly disintegrating. There was beauty in the decay, in the waiting, in the tension between timelessness and fragility. Her ideas touched on the vulnerability of being, and of life itself.

It has captured the imagination, it holds a suspended moment that seems to go on forever, a poetic meditation on presence and impermanence.

Featured in "Beyond the Ballerina" at Wyndham Art Gallery, Werribee, curated by Dr Megan Evans and Olivia Poloni (10 October – 21 December 2025).