The program for 2016’s Next Wave Festival was unveiled on Tuesday by the Festival’s Artistic Director Georgie Meagher. The biennial event, which takes place in Melbourne, is a platform for a new generation of risk-taking creatives on the cutting-edge of their respective art forms. The festival’s programme includes offerings by experimental performers, installationists and multi-disciplinary artists from across Australia.

This year’s event is particularly notable for its focus on tackling gender and racial inequality in the arts. 75% of the 2016 programme are projects created by women and 20% feature Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artists. This year’s Festival will also include a series of indigenous language workshops, focusing on the Woiwurrung and Boon Wurrung dialects, as well as a creative writing programme for disabled artists.

In total, 36 world premieres will be presented at this year’s Next Wave. These include Lilean Steiner’s Admission into the Everyday Sublime, a choreographic and sonic experience that investigates the body’s malleable relationship to weight and density, light as an extension of the body, the sculptural nature of sound and the healing power of its resonant frequencies.

Annaliese Constable – writer, performer and queer rights activist – will...