EMPTYING THE BUCKET wins Melbourne Fringe Award for Best Dance

Melbourne Fringe Festival on Saturday night announced the winning artists for the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Awards. Emptying The Bucket by Melbourne/Berlin based choreographer Nebahat Eroplat won the Best Dance Award for the new and thought-provoking dance piece that premiered at the Meat Market last week.

The Melbourne Fringe Awards acknowledge the quality, professionalism and diversity of work produced in each year?s festival. Ten awards across the Fringe categories of Performance, Comedy, Music, Live art, Dance, Circus, Cabaret, Visual Arts and Kids were presented.

Emptying The Bucket is a multi-layered dance piece that explores the questions around how we see and feel love in our contemporary society and how one can express these connections and ideas through live-art and dance.

Nebahat Eroplat says, "to win the Best Dance Award category is a huge achievement and a wonderful recognition for the work, its cast and crew. So many incredible artists presented work in this year?s Fringe program, and it?s an honour to walk away with a Fringe Award. We are excited to see the work continue to develop and delighted to have the support from the Melbourne Fringe Festival and its mentors.

Nebahat Erpolat is an independent choreographer and performer known for creating daring experimental performative works that pulls together various mediums like dance, live art, video and photography. Since graduating from the Victorian Collage of the Arts with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Dance Animateuring, Erpolat has developed her practice both physically and theoretically drawing on themes from her cultural background in contemporary issues, gender studies and her knowledge of Somatic Psychotherapy, creating highly experimental works that challenge traditional notions of performance and dance.

Emptying The Bucket had its Australian premiere season from 28 September to 1 October at the Meat Market, as part of the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival.