Buying tickets to Australian Dance Theatre's Birdbrain at The Playhouse in November of 2001 was a life-changing moment for then Canberra teenager Nerida Matthaei.
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"It just blew my mind," Matthaei said. "I was like 'I want to do that'."
Fast forward 15 years and Matthaei is the Artistic Director of her own contemporary dance company - Phluxus2 Dance Collective - producing two major shows per year, conducting dance workshops for young people and teachers, and providing a platform for other choreographers and dancers to develop and produce work.
Matthaei is now Brisbane-based, but will return home to Canberra next week to lead a session at Ausdance ACT's Move Up summer holiday workshop. Move Up is aimed at "teachers at all levels" interested in bringing dance into the classroom, including primary, high school and dance teachers.
Matthaei will teach next week's workshop attendees a "tiny bit" of repertoire from her most recent production, #angel-monster, as well as outline the choreographic process used in the development of the show.
"It will be a great insight for teachers into what happens in our world and our studio," Matthaei said.
"The thing about contemporary dance artists is that everyone is so different - the form itself is trying to reinvent itself at any given time - so the workshop that I take in choreographic practice will be really different to any of the other artists in the Move Up program.
"There's so much to learn from every individual person."
Though she started out as a classical ballerina, studying at the National Capital Ballet School and with Kiri Morcombe, Matthaei said she fell in love with contemporary dance through exposure to Sydney Dance Company and Australian Dance Theatre at Canberra Theatre Centre in the 1990s.
"Canberrans are so lucky," she said.
"They have such an amazing program at Canberra Theatre Centre, and I've missed it when I've moved to other states.
"To have exposure to people like Graeme Murphy at such a young age was hugely influential for me."
Matthaei was an inaugural performer at Canberra youth dance company QL2, and in high school spent a day a week at work experience at the former Australian Choreographic Centre under the direction of Ruth Osborne and Mark Gordon. It was a work experience program she described as "innovative" in Canberra in the 1990s.
"Merici [College] set up a program where I'd go and spend every Thursday with the Choreographic Centre," she said.
"I got to meet a lot of independent artists and see how they were doing things - it taught me a lot and it really grounded who I am as an artist and how i progressed from there.
"I've always been quite independent - running my own company, producing my own work and a lot of those things were influenced by growing up in Canberra."
Matthaei studied a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Dance) at Queensland University of Technology before launching Phluxus2 in 2006 with fellow Canberra dancers Skye Sewell and Chafia Brooks. She's in-demand as a choreographer in Queensland, and her previous work includes The Rat Trap and The Backup Service for Polytoxic Dance Theatre, ChoreoFUNK and Polarity II for Expressions Dance Company, and Macbeth for Queensland Theatre. In 2016, Matthaei was awarded the inaugural Lin Chin Award for Best Emerging Researcher at the World Dance Alliance Korea Festival and Conference.
"The easy thing for me is that I love it - I'm super passionate and I'm like the biggest choreographic nerd around," she said.
"I feel so lucky to do what I love every day."
Move Up: practical dance workshops for upper primary and secondary teachers, January 16-20, 2017, Canberra Dance Theatre, cnr Kingsley Street and Barry Drive, Canberra. trybooking.com/book/event?eid=249199
