Belvoir programs play at mix-and-match

THIS year Sydney's Belvoir - a theatre company - programmed Human Interest Story, a work by choreographer Lucy Guerin that in anyone's terminology was a dance work.Next year for Belvoir she will mix dancers and actors in Conversation Piece, for what the company bills as a "mesmerising cultural encounter between two art forms".Over at Sydney Theatre Company, there will be another mingling of actors and dancers when Kate Champion and her Force Majeure company create dance-theatre piece Never Did Me Any Harm, inspired by the novel The Slap. And, in a further sign that contemporary dance is being acknowledged as one of the country's richest sources of theatrical inspiration, next year and in 2013 choreographer Gideon Obarzanek is set to be an associate artist at STC.Obarzanek says the STC and Belvoir moves show "a strong desire to diversify into performance, rather than just being play driven". He cites several of his works that could be said to be theatre rather than dance, including Two-Faced Bastard, Tense Dave - for which Guerin, Obarzanek's partner, was part of the creative team - and his solo show Faker. He says Belvoir artistic director Ralph Myers and STC co-artistic directors Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton find "this blurring of forms interesting and want to bring it into their companies". Upton will act as dramaturg on Never Did Me Any Harm."I'm starting to make works with STC over the next two years," Obarzanek tells The Australian. "I think it's really exciting." He finishes as artistic director of Melbourne-based Chunky Move, a company he founded in 1995, at the end of the year. "I am 45. I'm young enough at this stage to do other things."