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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Temperance Hall

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Australian queer dance/performance/art. Boon Wurrung Country. Contemporary dance performance made in collaboration with significant artistic partners.

Scrutinizing behaviour, sexuality, culture with currency.

22/10/2026

Today is the day - National giving day of the Arts!

We are calling upon our community to 'Join the Tempernace Hall Society' by signing up to affordable regular monthly donations to help sustain the core of our operation - allowing new artistic works and unconventional approaches to experimental performance and dance to be developed, shared and circulated.

Whether you are a diehard regular, an occasional visitor or a fan from afar, will you join the Tempernace Hall Society?

Donation Link in Bio!

18/10/2026

All rushed about madly towards the end.

Please join us on Friday 6 November for Spider Ant Sparrow, a work-in-progress showing by Front Studio Resident Iris Elgar, marking the conclusion of their 2-month residency in Temperance Hall's Front Studio.

Spider Ant Sparrow is a new project drawing upon the loss of Iris' father, Mark, in 2025. Mark was a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist and left behind a trove of research and ephemera from his career. Haunting, seeking, foraging, agitating, regurgitating, releasing. In witnessing death, in witnessing a whole life in retrospect. Mark played the trumpet when he was a boy. Iris played with spiders in the fireplace.

CHOREOGRAPHY by Iris Elgar
PERFORMED by Iris Elgar, Val Emerald & Lucie Coffey
SOUND by Lucie Coffey
COSTUMES by Beccy Clarke
SET DESIGN by Beccy Clarke & Iris Elgar
LIGHTING by Chiara Wenban

DATE & TIME Friday 6th November, 7 pm
DURATION 40 minute showing, followed by a Q&A with the artist
LOCATION Temperance Hall, Main Hall, 199 Napier Street, South Melbourne
ACCESSIBILITY Temperance Hall's Main Hall is wheelchair accessible.
TICKETS Pay what you can via the link in bio.

The 2026 Front Studio Residency has been supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, private donors and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Photograph courtesy of the artist

29/09/2026

Evolving and accumulating across four weeks in September, Temperance Movement sought to find a new format for sharing, speaking, and gathering around dance and embodied performance practices.

Curated by Dr Brooke Stamp, each iteration of Temperance Movement invited two artists to share their current preoccupations in a supportive, in-progress format — one artist was invited to do so through movement, the other, through speech.

Thank you to the artists – Alexander Powers, Hellen Sky, Rebecca Hilton, Harrison Hall, Geoffrey Watson, Tony Yap, Anastassia Krstevska and Yumi Umiumare – for your willingness to meet this emergent format and offer such generous and thought-provoking contributions.

Thank you also to the community for joining us at the hall each week, and helping us shape this new initiative with such depth and openness.

Temperance Movement was made possible with the generous support of the City of Port Phillip.

Images courtesy of Temperance Hall

07/09/2026

Join us this Wednesday 9 September for Temperance Movement #2, featuring Carly Sheppard and Harrison Hall.

Temperance Movement is a platform for generating critical cultural discourse around choreographic practice and bodily thought.

Two artists will share their current preoccupations – one through speaking, one through moving – acting as provocateurs for community dialogue.

Those gathered are invited to reciprocate with reflections.

Facilitated by Temperance Movement Curator Dr. Brooke Stamp, community discussion prompts us to consider: how are we negotiating practice in these times?

DATE & TIME Wednesday 2 September, 6.30pm
LOCATION Temperance Hall, Main Hall, 199 Napier St, South Melbourne
ACCESSIBILITY Wheelchair accessible
TICKETS Pay what you can – register via the link in bio

Temperance Movement is a new initiative held across four weeks in September that supports choreographers to present new ideas – one is invited to do so through movement, the other through speech.

This program is generously supported by the City of Port Phillip.

Image credits: top: Carly Sheppard, MTC 'Performing World Problems'; bottom: Harrison Hall, Image Credit Luca Dante

27/08/2026

Episode 4 of On the Couch with artist DRM (Daniel R Marks) ahead of their work-in-progress showing 'Tract of Decision' next Friday 4 September.

On the Couch is a new conversation series-an invitation for Tempernace Hall artists to speak. Positioning artists in the couch, these sessions aim to capture a moment in time, mobilising choreographic and bodily-inclined practices through speaking.

Access the full-episode, and register to attend 'Tract of Decision' via the links in our bio!

24/07/2026

Episode 3. of On the Couch features artist Amaara Raheem.

On the Couch is a new conversation series – an invitation for Temperance Hall artists to speak. Positioning artists on the couch, these sessions aim to capture a moment in time, mobilising choreographic and bodily-inclined practices through speaking

Access to the full episode via the link in our bio!

21/07/2026

Thank you for joining us at the hall earlier this month for After Agatha — a work in progress sharing that marked the conclusion of Amaara Raheem’s Front Studio Residency at Temperance Hall.

With collaborators/performers: gemma+molly (Gemma Sattler & Molly McKenzie)
Documentation: Anna White

14/07/2026

Across July and August, we welcome artist and researcher DRM (Daniel R Marks) to Temperance Hall's Front Studio.

DRM's interdisciplinary choreographic practice engages intersections of image-making histories (with attention to the iconographic image), ephemeral and extractive materialities, q***r radicalism and surveillance/militarised technology. They work in a hybrid practice incorporating performance, virtual and screen-based formats, sculpture (including wearable sculpture and installation), experimental text, and sound composition.

DRM completed their PhD Protagonist: A Choreography of Q***r Digitiality at RMIT University School of Art in 2024 and are a lecturer at RMIT School of Fashion & Textiles. They are affiliated with Performing Dress Lab (RMIT, Aalto University & London College of Fashion), the Posthuman Art Network (Foreign Objekt), and ACMI X. Recent work by DRM has been shown by ACMI, Temperance Hall and Liquid Architecture.

Welcome DRM!

~

Piloted in 2025, Temperance Hall's Front Studio Residency Program offers six independent artists two-months of exclusive access to the Front Studio to undertake embodied research and practice development. Artists receive a stipend, producing and documentation support, towards a public outcome facilitated by Temperance Hall.

In 2026, Temperance Hall's Front Studio Residency program is supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, private donors and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

29/06/2026

We are looking forward to seeing you at Temperance Hall this Friday for After Agatha, a work-in-progress sharing by Front Studio Resident Amaara Raheem.

Part lecture, part ritual, part spell, all Dance, After Agatha channels the Sick Witch — who emerged from Amaara's encounters with breast cancer, Past and Present, and from reading Johanna Hedva's 'Sick Woman Theory'. Refusing the promise of Cure, the Sick Witch asks what other forms of Knowledge become possible when bodies — human and other-than-human — are Damaged beyond Repair.

In this latest incarnation, the Sick Witch takes the form of St Agatha: patron saint of breast cancer, nurses, fire, catastrophe, and Survival. Moving between times, places, bodies, and cultures, After Agatha explores the great dancing deities of Fortune and Misfortune: the Immortal duality that shapes our Mortal life.

CREATED & PERFORMED by Amaara Raheem
PERFORMERS gemma+molly (Gemma Sattler & Molly McKenzie)
DATE & TIME Friday 3rd July, 7 pm

This showing is currently booked out, but there may be some spots on the door if you are lucky — find out more about Amaara and her collaborators via the link in bio.

Image courtesy of the artist Amaara Raheem

19/06/2026

Join us at Temperance Hall on Friday 3 July for After Agatha, a work-in-progress sharing by Front Studio Resident Amaara Raheem.

DATE & TIME Friday 3rd July, 7 pm
DURATION 45 minutes, followed by discussion
LOCATION Temperance Hall, Main Hall, 199 Napier Street, South Melbourne
REGISTER Pay as you can via link in bio — tickets are limited

After Agatha is a work-in-progress sharing by Amaara Raheem made in collaboration with contemporary dance duo gemma+molly (Gemma Sattler and Molly McKenzie).

Part lecture, part ritual, part spell, all Dance, After Agatha channels the Sick Witch — who emerged from Amaara's encounters with breast cancer, Past and Present, and from reading Johanna Hedva's 'Sick Woman Theory'. Refusing the promise of Cure, the Sick Witch asks what other forms of Knowledge become possible when bodies — human and other-than-human — are Damaged beyond Repair.

In this latest incarnation, the Sick Witch takes the form of St Agatha: patron saint of breast cancer, nurses, fire, catastrophe, and Survival. Moving between times, places, bodies, and cultures, After Agatha explores the great dancing deities of Fortune and Misfortune: the Immortal duality that shapes our Mortal life.

See you there.

Image: courtesy of the artist

Address

199 Napier Street
South Melbourne, VIC
3205

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://www.temperancehall.com.au/, https://linktr.ee/temperance.hall

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