Carly Sheppard
Carly Sheppard (Tagalaka, Chinese, Welsh, Hungarian, Slovakian descendent settler, raised on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nations) is a cross-disciplinary performance artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), working across dance and theatre making and performance, sculpture, drawing, writing, voice, and installation. Her practice navigates complex narratives of intersecting race, class, mythologies and identities we inherit and how meaning is created and processed through prisms of colonial interruption. Carly’s work reflects her fascination with the chaos of conflicting cultural paradigms.

Carly’s career and practice have been platformed and nurtured through invaluable artist initiatives run by BlakDance, British Council, Australia Council for the Arts, ILBIJERRI and more. Carly’s formal training includes Careers In Dance at NAISDA Dance College and a Bachelor of Dance at Victorian College of the Arts. Carly’s recent performance credits include Chase (A Daylight Connection), A Nightime Travesty (A Daylight Connection), Set Piece (Anna Breckon and Nat Randall), Considerable Sexual License (Joel Bray Dance), Anthem (Performing Lines and Arts Centre Melbourne) and Love (Dee and Cornelius).

Alisdair Macindoe
Alisdair Macindoe is an independent multidisciplinary choreographer living on unceded stolen Woi Wurrung country. With an interest in extending the boundaries of choreographic practice, Alisdair’s work spans dance, sound, electronics, coding and text. Recent works have seen him explore automated dance and Artificial Intelligence; new technology for music expression; trans-humanism; waste and climate change; and identity in the age of narcissism.

Alisdair’s independent and collaborative work has been commissioned and presented widely, including Plagiary (2024 - Now or Never Festival & Unwrapped, Sydney Opera House. 2025 - Noorderzon Festival), DULL BOY (2024, Part of Three, Australasian Dance Collective, Ohm Festival @ Brisbane Powerhouse), PROGRESS REPORT 2025, 2023 & 2021, with co-director Alison Currie for Vitalstatistix, Frame Biennial @ The Substation & INDance @ Sydney Dance Company), and MEETING (2015, with co-creator Antony Hamilton, commissioned by Arts House, presented across 35 international seasons).

Alisdair has received 6 Greenroom awards; an Australian Helpmann Award, and a New York Performing Arts Award ‘Bessie’. He was the 2019 Resident Director for Lucy Guerin Inc; the 2019 Ausdance Peggy Van Praagh choreographic Fellow; the 2020 Dancenorth NO-SHOW choreographic resident; a 2020-21 Sidney Myer Foundation Creative Fellow and a recipient of the 2022 Chloe Munro Mid-Career Fellowship.

We started working on The Shepherds because, despite sharing a last name, our separate family stories felt like puzzles with missing and mismatched pieces. Growing up, we both felt that sense of not quite belonging, or wanting to re-frame our story, of always searching for connection where history runs thin, lips are sealed, or the record just stops. Our collaboration is about admitting what we don’t know, laughing at the oddities, confronting our inherited beliefs, and sharing the strange comfort in making things up as a means to grow and feel a sense of belonging.

This isn’t a search for perfect answers. Instead, we find meaning in the small gestures: telling a tale, sharing a choreography, playing inside a scene, adorning a garment, sharing a glance, or building something together out of things we find along the way. Through creating The Shepherds, we are trying to bring our real questions, stories, and vulnerabilities forward—to show how clumsy, heartfelt, and sometimes funny it is to try and create new rituals when the old ones don’t fit.

The Shepherds is our way of reaching out, hoping others recognise themselves in the messiness and wonder of figuring out where you belong.

Co-Creator, Choreographer, Writer & Performer: Carly Sheppard (Tagalaka, Chinese, Welsh, Hungarian, Slovakian descendent settler, raised on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nations)
Co-Creator, Choreographer, Sound Designer & Performer: Alisdair Macindoe (born on lutruwita, the unceded land of the muwinina people, descendent of Clan Murray & Clan Buchanan, Scotland)
Performer: Karlia Cook (Mā’ohi- Norf’k, Māori (Ngāpuhi))
Performer: Tyrel Dulvarie (Yirrganydji, Dugulbara, Kalkadoon and Umpila peoples)
Dramaturg: Emily Tomlins
Visual Designer (Staging & Costumes): Jonathan Oxlade
Production Manager: Emma Holgate
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Composer & Sound Designer: Lawrence English
Assistant Visual Designer & Development Performer: Geoffrey Watson
Producers: Stella Webster & Jason Cross, Insite Arts