Ruth Osborne
artistic director

QL2 Dance Artistic Director Ruth Osborne pioneered youth dance practice in Australia: performing, teaching, choreographing, directing and collaborating. She established the Contemporary Dance Centre, taught at WAAPA, and was founding AD of Steps Youth Dance Company. She served on boards of Ausdance, WA Ballet, and WAAPA. She has developed unique programs in Canberra at the Australian Choreographic Centre, and now as Artistic Director of QL2 Dance. She established Quantum Leap youth dance ensemble, developing choreographic literacy in young dancers, and has presented youth dance in Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Jamaica, and Scotland. She represented Australian youth dance at Dance and the Child International (Jamaica, Taiwan and Adelaide), and Youth Dance England’s 2010 conference. At the 2011 Australian Dance Awards, she won the Award for Services to Dance “For her superlative teaching and wide-ranging services to dance for over four decades; for an outstanding contribution to dance education and to the development of youth dance practice in Australia.” Ruth was Director of the 2012 and 2013 Australian Dance Awards. She won the ACT Critic’s Circle award in 2015 for Walking and Falling. In 2017 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to research youth dance practice across the UK.

amélie langevin
general manager

Amélie grew up in Canada, in an artistic family, in a small French speaking town, Chicoutimi. After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montréal) with a Major in Contemporary Dance, she travelled extensively in South America, Europe and Asia before returning to Montréal to complete a Graduate Diploma in Arts Management. She worked as Manager at Studio Bizz, a dance studio in Montréal offering residencies for artists and companies in dance and theatre as well as a range of classes and performances. In Australia, she completed a Graduate Diploma in Teaching and has worked at Radford College as Performing Arts Administrator and Teacher, Sunday Manager at the Old Bus Depot Markets and Administrator at Ausdance ACT and QL2 Dance. She is now General Manager at QL2 Dance. She is passionate about dance especially contact improvisation, outdoor adventures, healthy lifestyle, mountains and snow.

Emma Batchelor Development Manager

Emma Batchelor is a queer writer and author from Canberra. From 2016-2019 she edited and wrote for online publication Leiden, and in 2017 published ‘Building a Conscious Wardrobe (and other fun things)’ a book championing conscious consumerism. In May, 2021 her first novel ‘Now that I see you’ won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award before being released in the US in 2023. Emma regularly writes on the arts, gender and sexuality, mental illness and identity.

As a dancer, Emma has performed for QL2 in both regional and international tours as well as for brother, choreographer James Batchelor. Emma is currently the Chair of MARION, a centre elevating writers and their art, sits on the Minister’s Creative Council and is an ambassador for the ACT Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge. 

Her professional background is in corporate governance, community organising and communications.

natalie wade
administrator & Teacher

Natalie grew up in Sydney and has trained in ballet, gymnastics, and commercial dance. She has always loved dance as an artform and has a particular love of, and passion for ballet. Natalie raised her two boys in country towns in NSW whilst studying Visual Arts and was a gymnastics, advanced tumbling, dance teacher and Senior Activity Officer at the Police and Community Youth Club in Goulburn for many years. Natalie has a passion for working with young people with disability or additional support needs through her work as a gymnastics coach, trainer with the community participation program for Essential Personnel and as a teacher’s aide in primary schools. Natalie joined the QL2 community in 2016 as a parent volunteer on the Quantum Leap project which was her son’s first project for QL2 Dance. It was such a great experience she stayed and joined QL2 Dance as a staff member in 2019.

olivia Wikner
choreographer, teacher & social media Marketing coordinator

Olivia Wikner is a wearer of many hats: a dreamer, performer, choreographer, teacher, photographer and collaborator. Raised in Canberra, Olivia went on to study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and Taipei National University of the Arts. She has been dancing with Australian Dance Party since 2016 and performed in over 20 works. In 2021 she received a Canberra Critic Circle Award for her solo with cellist Alex Voorhoeve in ‘Symbiosis’. Alongside performing, Olivia teaches and choreographs for QL2 Dance and various other dance studios. She works as Party Whip for Australian Dance Party and is the Social Media Marketing Coordinator at QL2 Dance. Olivia also freelances as a dance photographer and videographer. In 2022 Olivia started her biggest creative role as a Mum. 

Alana stenning
teacher & choreographer

Alana Stenning is a graduate of the AC Arts with a Bachelor of Creative Arts in Dance. In her third year she created her first full length work How ‘Bout Them Apples for the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Before commencing university, Alana trained at QL2 Dance where she worked with many well-known choreographers and developed her own interest in choreography and dance film making. During her time at QL2 Alana toured and performed in Bangkok, London and Glasgow with a work created by James Batchelor. Since graduating, Alana has moved back to Canberra to work with the Australian Dance Party (Autonomous, In a flash, Water Tight, MOVING TO ZERO, ENERGEIA, Soul Defender and From the Vault). Alana created V (2018)and Great Woman Wolf Woman Bone Woman for Dance on the Edge and Escalate 2019. Alana continues her relationship with QL2 as a professional performer, teacher and choreographer.

Patricia Hayes-Cavanagh
Teacher

Patricia Hayes Cavanagh is an alumna of QL2. After graduating year 12 in 2018, she went on to study dance full-time at Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year. While there, she worked with Leah Marojevic, Vicki Van Hout, Idan Cohen, Holly Doyle, Omer Backley-Astrachan, Jess Goodfellow, and Rafael Bonachela, amongst many others. Since returning to Canberra, she has become the inaugural QL2 and Australian Dance Party intern, assisting with QL2 projects such as Rebel (2021) and Terra Firma (2022). Patricia has performed with Australian Dance Party in Soul Defenders (2021), a-love-dance (2021), LESS (2022), and Escape From Plastika (2022). She continues her relationship with QL2 and ADP as a professional dancer, teacher, choreographer, and artist.

Sarah Long began dancing in her early childhood, taking ballet classes and later progressing into contemporary dance. She has been a part of the QL2 community since 2017, performing in Two Zero (2018), Filling the Space (2019), Sympathetic Monsters (2020), REBEL (2021), and Terra Firma (2022), along with several Hot to Trot choreographic projects. Now studying at the ANU, Sarah is continuing her dance journey through teaching, hoping to inspire a new generation of young dancers.

Levi Szabo
Teacher

Levente's journey started overseas in Hungary. He started his career as a classical ballet dancer before moving into contemporary dance. Travel allowed him to work internationally and meet, exchange and evolve with other amazing artists. His path brought him to Australia where he has been fortunate enough to become a member of the Canberra artist community. He is a current Party Artist with Australian Dance Party (2020-2022) performing in major works: Symbiosis and LESS. He is one of QL2’s ballet teacher.