Contributors

Our contributors—the talented people who research and write about dance—their work champions innovation, creativity and diversity in dance.

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Linda Ashley View Full Bio

Linda Ashley (M.A. University of London): Senior Dance Lecturer and Research Stream Leader at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. Linda has extensive academic, choreographic and performing experience in dance. Currently, she is completing doctorate studies at the University of Auckland. Publications since 1996: Dance Sense (Northcote House Publishers, 2nd ed., 2005); Essential Guide to Dance (3rd ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 2008); and Dance Theory & Practice for Teachers: Physical and performing skills, (Essential Resources, 2005). She completed the New Zealand Ministry of Education curriculum materials development contract to produce the video Dancing the Long White Cloud (2002).

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Sruti Bandopadhay View Full Bio

Dr Sruti Bandopadhay is one of the foremost Manipuri dance artists of India and was awarded the top grade in Manipuri Dance by National Television, India. She is currently a Reader in Dance at Rabindra Bharati University, and received the Visiting Lecturer Fulbright Fellowship to teach Manipuri Dance and Survey of Indian Dance at the World Arts and Culture Centre, UCLA in the United States.

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Karen Barbour View Full Bio

Karen Barbour is a senior dance lecturer at The University of Waikato in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her current research interests lie in collaborative artistic research, feminist choreographic practices, ecological and environmental dance, performance improvisation, autoethnography and alternative writing practices to express lived experiences.

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Narelle Benjamin View Full Bio

Narelle Benjamin has worked with many Australian and international choreographers and companies. She won The Age Performing Arts Award for Best Performer in 1994 and the Hepzibah Tintner Fellowship in 2006. She has worked on award-winning films as choreographer, director and dancer and won the award for best short film in 1999 at the Sydney film festival and an Australian Dance Award for Dance on Film for Restoration. Narelle has choreographed two works for The One Extra Company, Inside Out (2002) and Out of Water (2004); Gossamer for Sydney Dance Company’s Directors Cut season (2006); The Dark Room for The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque (2007); Figment for the Sydney Festival (2008); Lulie (2007) and Pixel (2008) for Theatre of Image; In Glass with performers Kristina Chan, Paul White and video artist Samuel James for contemporary dance festivals Spring Dance (2010) and ‘Dance Massive’ (2011). Narelle’s work ‘In Glass’ won the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance in 2011.

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Melissa Blanco Borelli View Full Bio

Melissa Blanco Borelli, a Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Surrey, teaches courses on identity politics, dance and culture, choreographing writing, and Latin American film. She has a PhD from UC Riverside’s program in Dance History and Theory (now Critical Dance Studies) and is currently researching the Cuban mulata dancing body and comparative social dance histories in New Orleans and Havana.

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Jonathan Bollen View Full Bio

Jonathan Bollen lectures in Drama at Flinders University and reviews performance for RealTime. He is co-author of Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s (2008). His research on dance, gender and performance has been published in The Drama Review and several anthologies, including Dancing Desires (2001) and Multimedia Histories (2007).

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Karen Bond View Full Bio

Karen Bond is a professor in dance at Temple University (Philadelphia USA). She worked in Australia in higher dance education from 1976 to 2000, developing Australia’s first Masters Coursework in Dance at Melbourne College of Advanced Education. Her research focuses on participant meanings of dance in education, therapy and performance.

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Georgie Boucher View Full Bio

Georgie Boucher holds a Phd in Theatre Studies from the University of Melbourne; her thesis was entitled Subjects in-between: art beyond identity. She has given lectures on feminism and popular culture at both the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, and tutors in Theatre Studies, Cultural Studies and a Feminist Theory subject entitled Nymphs, Sluts and Madonnas.

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Shaaron Boughen View Full Bio

Shaaron Boughen BA (Hons) Dance, London. MA Dance, LSCD University of Kent, was Dance Discipline Leader at QUT until 2010 and has worked extensively as a performer, teacher, choreographer and designer in the UK and Australia. Particular areas of interest include investigating the live body in digital spaces, interdisciplinary practices and reversioning processes across multiple performance platforms. Shaaron is the Queensland dance reviewer for The Australian newspaper.

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Eleanor Brickhill View Full Bio

Eleanor Brickhill, an independent dance artist for over 35 years, has performed in Australia and the UK with companies including Sydney Dance Company, English National Opera and Dance Exchange. Recent research projects have been with Critical Path, Fit (2005) and Friction (2007). She has written for and about dance performance, conducted research on Auslan, and is currently passionate about Argentine Tango and language studies.

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Peter Brinson View Full Bio

Peter Brinson was the author of many books, television programs, articles and dance reports. He has been a dance advocate and consultant all over the world. In the 1980s he was head of post-graduate and community studies at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London. With Peggy van Praagh as mentor Brinson began his career as dance producer, animateur and scholar in the early 1950s. In 1964 he founded and directed The Royal Ballet's Ballet for All company, researching and creating all the programs for what became a unique pioneering effort in making ballet accessible to wider audiences. In 1971 Peter was appointed Director of the UK & British Commonwealth Branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation where he initiated the Gulbenkian Workshops for Choreographers and Composers in London, and later, a ground-breaking series of studies on dance education and training. In 1963 he and Peggy a co-authored book they called The Choreographic Art and their association continued to develop after van Praagh's relocation to Australia. Peter Brinson's first visit to Australia was in the summer of 1975-76 when he conducted a course in dance history and criticism at the University of New England at Armidale in Northern NSW. Peter's course–in association with the choreographic workshops–was the beginning of serious dance scholarship in Australia.

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Alan Brissenden View Full Bio

Alan Brissenden (b1932), who has been commenting on Australian and international dance since 1950, currently writes and reviews for The Australian, Dance Australia, The Adelaide Review and Radio Adelaide and edits Brolga: An Australian journal about dance, the scholarly journal of the Australian Dance Council (Ausdance). His publications include Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), the Oxford World’s Classics edition of As You Like It (1993), Australia Dances: Creating Australian Dance 1945 –1965 (2010, co-author) and numerous contributions to scholarly journals, essay anthologies and reference books, including The International Encyclopedia of Dance (1998) and The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2001). An Honorary Visiting Research Fellow of the University of Adelaide, in 1996 Alan Brissenden was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to the Arts.

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Adam Broinowski View Full Bio

Adam Broinowski has made solo and group shows, a feature documentary (Hell Bento!), and worked with many Australian companies, touring through South America, Europe, UK, US, Asia and Australia. While based in Tokyo for 5 years, he was a core member of Gekidan Kaitaisha, performing in company and transcultural productions (including the Bye bye series, 2001-2005; Bodies of War, 2003; Dream Regime, 2004~2005). He was a Monbukagakusho research fellow at the University of Tokyo (2003-2005) and is a PhD candidate at University of Melbourne/VCAM.

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Carol Brown View Full Bio

Carol Brown is an internationally established performer, choreographer and currently Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at The National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland. Her work evolves through collaborative research with artists and scholars from other disciplines, in particular architecture, music and media design. Formerly choreographer in residence at the Place Theatre, London, Carol has received numerous awards including a Jerwood Award for Choreography, the Ludwig Forum International Prize for Innovation and a NESTA Dream Time fellowship.

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Renate Bräuninger View Full Bio

Dr Renate Bräuninger, lecturer in dance, Liverpool Hope University, Great Britain, has a background in both music and dance, receiving an MA in Musicology, Performing Arts and German Literature from the Ludwig Maxmilians University, Munich. She studied at the Performing Arts Department at New York University where she also created her own choreography and participated in the choreographic workshops at Dance Theatre Workshop under Bessie Schönberg. Renate has lectured at different German universities and at the University of Winchester, UK. At Middlesex University, London, she worked with Susan Melrose in practice as research. Her PhD focuses on the relationship between music and movement in dance and film.

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Ralph Buck View Full Bio

Ralph Buck is Associate Professor and Head of Dance Studies at Auckland University, and an experienced teacher in primary, secondary and tertiary contexts. Actively involved in the World Dance Alliance and World Alliance for Arts Educators, he has presented his dance education research, which is within curriculum design, pedagogy and community dance, in many international forums.

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Vera Bullen View Full Bio

Vera Bullen was a senior tutor in Dance Studies at The University of Auckland from 2006-2008. She taught ballet, history, kinesiology, research proposal and safe dance practices subjects. In 2009 she went to Seattle, USA, to write a conditioning book for performing artists and undertake Pilates teacher training. Vera holds an MCPA from The University of Auckland, an MA (Dance Studies) from the Laban Centre in London and BA (Dance/Drama) from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a member of IADMS (International association for Dance Medicine and Science) and PAMA (Performing Arts Medicine Association).

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Elizabeth Cameron Dalman View Full Bio

Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM is director of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and artistic director of Mirramu Dance Company. She founded Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide and was its artistic director from 1965-75. She has had many teaching positions in Universities around Australia, and as a performer, choreographer, teacher and researcher, Elizabeth travels internationally on a regular basis, particularly in recent years to Taiwan, Japan and West Africa. She has received many awards for her work, including an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (1994) and the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to contemporary dance in Australia (1995). Elizabeth recently completed a PhD at the University of Western Sydney.

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Amanda Card View Full Bio

Amanda Card lectures in dance studies, cross-cultural performance and performance history in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. A former dancer with Kinetic Energy and Human Veins Dance Theatre, she has a PhD in History from the University of Sydney and was Executive Producer with the One Extra Company from 2000 to 2006.

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Annette Carmichael View Full Bio

Annette lives in the creative enclave that is Denmark, a small town on the Great Southern coast of WA. From this vibrant home she works as a community dance artist and as the State’s Regional Contemporary Dance Facilitator for Ausdance WA. As a community artist Annette has created a number of works for Denmark. Over the past three years she facilitated moveMENt, a men’s contemporary dance ensemble and has created two site specific community works, Our Secret River in 2010 and its sister project Solace+Yearning: Between Kwoorabup and Denmark in 2012. Annette won the 2011 WA Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community/Regional Dance.

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Chey Chankethya View Full Bio

Chey Chankethya graduated with a BA at the Royal University of Fine Arts in 2005. She has performed nationally and internationally for the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, such as ‘Millennium 2000’, and Angkor Wat Exposition in 2006. Her choreographic works, both classical and contemporary, include Dilemma (2002), Falling in Love (2003), Golden Deer (2004), Preah Khan Reach (2005) and Water and Thunder (2006). In 2006, she was awarded a Choreography Arts Management Fellowship at the University of California (UCLA). She teaches classical dance at the Secondary School of Fine Arts and is the leader of Trey Visay (Compass), a dance ensemble consisting of nine young Cambodian dancers.

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Ananya Chatterjea View Full Bio

Ananya Chatterjea is a dancer, choreographer, dance scholar, and dance educator. She is Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre and Director of Dance and Professor in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. She works at the intersection of artistic excellence and social justice and is the recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Artist Fellowship in Choreography.

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Sue Cheesman View Full Bio

Sue Cheesman is a senior lecturer in Dance Education in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Previous experience includes adviser for research into developing ideas in dance and choreographer/educationalist for Touch Compass Dance Company. Her enthusiasm and passion for dance knows no bounds.

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Lee Christofis View Full Bio

Lee Christofis has been a leading dance critic and arts commentator in Australia for more than 25 years. He is a long-time advocate for dance, has served eight years as Ausdance National Vice President and is an Honorary Life Member of Ausdance. Lee is a recipient of a Victorian Award for Excellence in Multicultural Affairs for MAMAS, the Multicultural Arts Marketing Ambassadors Strategy which he designed and delivered in conjunction with the Australia Council. After twelve years in early childhood education and welfare, Lee joined the School of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne where he taught twentieth century dance history, arts criticism and arts management. He has been the Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia since 2006 and received the award for Services to Dance at the Australian Dance Awards in 2009.

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Haya Cohen View Full Bio

Haya Cohen is an arts practitioner whose practice-led research is undertaken through a multi-disciplinary approach that includes creative arts practice, anthropology, biology, social sciences and philosophy. Presently, Haya is completing her PhD and is teaching at Griffith University. Her body of work ties notions of embodiment, communication and subjectivity to the processes of making fibres and textile. Making yarns and fabric become a methodology for both correlating academic research and producing experiential-based research that increase bodily possibility. Haya has exhibited across Australia and overseas. She has promoted contemporary art and community through her involvement in community art projects and performance.

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Roger Copeland View Full Bio

Professor Roger Copeland holds a chair in Theatre and Dance at Oberlin College. His books include the widely used anthology, 'What Is Dance?' (Oxford University Press, l983) and 'Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance' (Routledge, 2004). He has just finished writing and directing his first feature length film 'The Unrecovered', a fictional narrative about the psychological aftermath of 9/11.

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Hilary Crampton View Full Bio

1943—2009. Hilary Crampton was a dance performer, critic, advocate and educator. She was in the inaugural graduating year of the Bachelor program at the Laban Centre in London, and she also attended each of the four Armidale choreographic seminars from 1969 to 1976. She was closely involved in the subsequent founding conference of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now Ausdance) in 1977. Hilary was on the board of the Green Mill Dance Project in the 1990s and dance critic for The Age newspaper until 2009. She was forthright in her advocacy for dance and dance education, and received the Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 2006.

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Debra Crookshanks View Full Bio

Debra is an Australian-trained manipulative physiotherapist with many years of experience in dance education and the assessment and treatment of dance related injuries. She has a private practice in Sydney, lectures at both secondary and tertiary levels and has presented papers at numerous conferences. Debra was the convenor of the Safe Dance sub-committee for Ausdance NSW.

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Ojeya Cruz Banks View Full Bio

Ojeya Cruz Banks works as a lecturer and choreographer for the Dance Studies program at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research includes dance anthropology, pedagogy, postcolonial studies, and contemporary indigenous choreography. She was selected for the 2008 Professional Choreographer’s Lab at the Jacob’s Pillow School of Dance and the 2011 Pacific Dance Choreographic Laboratory.

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Alexander Dea View Full Bio

Alexander Dea is an ethnographer-performer living in Central Java documenting, with video and audio, the last remaining masters of classical performing arts. He also makes new works with Asia’s contemporary and classical artists, Didik Nini Thowok, the late Ben Suharto, Ramli Ibrahim, and others. He writes on dance activity both traditional and modern.

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Kathie and Pat Debenham View Full Bio

Professor Kathie Debenham PhD, CLMA, Utah Valley University, has developed programs and curricula in university, secondary and primary school settings, and directed companies of children/youth, university, and professional dancers. She has presented the Laban/Bartenieff work at numerous regional, national, and international conferences in dance and in the humanities. Pat Debenham is a CLMA and Professor of Contemporary Dance and Music Theatre at Brigham Young University. In addition to workshops and choreography that have been presented internationally, he has published in Research in Dance Education, The Journal of Dance Education, NAHE Interdisciplinary Journal and Contact Quarterly. Pat’s professional work demonstrates how Laban principles can be woven into and through all aspects of a dance curriculum.

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Elizabeth Dempster View Full Bio

Dr Elizabeth Dempster is a performer, choreographer, writer and critic. She is senior lecturer in dance at Victoria University and a member of the boards of Writings on Dance and Dance Exchange. Her research interests include practice-based performance, critical, analytic and choreographic dance writing; modern and post modern dance practice and theory; improvisational technologies and performance; philosophies of the body and feminist methodologies.

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Ann Dils View Full Bio

Ann Dils is Professor in the Department of Dance, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a member of UNCG’s Women’s and Gender Studies Coordinating Council. She served as editor (2006-2008) and co-editor (2003-2005) of Dance Research Journal and co-edited the collections Intersections: Dance, Place, and Identity (2006) and Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (2001). She is co-director of Accelerated Motion, a web-based dance preservation and curriculum project. Dils recently reconstructed the Cocteau/Milhaud 1920 farce Le Boeuf sur le Toit and is currently writing an article about audience reception and the presentation of reconstructed dance.

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Clare Dyson View Full Bio

Clare Dyson is a choreographer who creates dance, theatre and site specific performances focusing on collaborative processes. She has created work with a variety of multi-form artists and scientists that blends movement, light, dance and installation. Clare has worked as an artist-in-residence with several organisations, and in 2006 she won an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance. She received the Australia Council Cité Internationale des Arts Residency in 2008 where she created The Voyeur, nominated in the Independent Dance category of the 2010 Australian Dance Awards. Her PhD thesis examines audience engagement with contemporary dance.

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Alison East View Full Bio

Alison East lectures in Dance Studies at the University of Otago, teaching Choreography, Somatics and Community Dance. In 1989 she established New Zealand’s first contemporary choreography qualification at Unitec, Auckland, which spawned a new generation of New Zealand dance artists. Her research concerns Ecodance pedagogy, Trans-locational Dance Education and Trans-disciplinary research.

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Rodney Edgecombe View Full Bio

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe lectures English literature at the University of Cape Town, and holds one of its Distinguished Teacher Awards. He took his MA with distinction at Rhodes University, where he won the Royal Society of St George Prize for English, and his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded the Members' English Prize, 1978/1979. He has published 11 books-the most recent being on Thomas Hood-and 332 articles on topics that range from Shakespeare to nineteenth-century ballet and opera.

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Monte Engler View Full Bio

Monte Engler, an accountant specialising in Self-Managed Superannuation, is involved with research,administration and compliance in the field and works for the University of Adelaide and SuperGuardian Pty Ltd. Ausdance SA’s Treasurer, he is also finishing his Masters of Commerce (Accounting) degree.

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Shona Erskine View Full Bio

Shona graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts School of Dance with a Bachelor of Dance in 1994. She went on to gain a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) Psychology at Deakin University in 2000, and a MPsych/PhD (Industrial/Organisational Psychology) from the University of Melbourne in 2007. Her PhD comprised a case study of an effective contemporary dance education program and its participating youth. Shona has taught dance at Deakin University, the Victorian College of the Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. She has also been involved in a number of dance related research projects at Edith Cowan University, Australian Dance Theatre, and Flinders University.

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Rachel Fensham View Full Bio

Rachel Fensham is Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at the University of Surrey (UK). Her publications include The Dolls’ Revolution (2005) and To Watch Theatre (2009) and articles in Discourses in Dance, New Theatre Quarterly and Youth Studies Australia. She conducted an Australian Research Council project, Transnational and Crosscultural Choreographies: the politics of Australian dance, 1970-2000 (2005-09) and is currently collaborating on an Arts and Humanities Research Council project, Pioneer Women of British Modern Dance.

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Sally Gardner View Full Bio

Sally Gardner has a background as a dancer-choreographer in companies in London, New York, Sydney and Melbourne, and is the co-editor of Writings on Dance. Her research interests include the areas of dancing experience, modern/post-modern and contemporary dance concepts, values and processes, philosophy of the body, and the historically and culturally specific modes of dance training. Awards include Australia Council Awards for individual dance development and production; Centre National du Livre, France translator's grant for her translation of 'Poetics of Contemporary Dance' by Laurence Louppe.

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Tony Geeves View Full Bio

Tony Geeves worked overseas for 25 years as a professional dancer and has taught extensively since 1974 at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.Since his retirement from full-time dancing in 1982, Tony has obtained a Certificate in Anatomy, Neuroanatomy and Physiology, a Teaching Diploma and an MA in Dance/Movement Therapy at New York University. Tony has lectured and given workshops at universities in Oslo, Stockholm and New York, and addressed the 4th Dance Medicine Congress in Finland and the Healthier Dancer Conference in the UK. He lectured in dance at the Queensland University of Technology and received an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 1997. Since 2005 Tony has been Director of Pilates & Physio on Collingwood in Brisbane, and he also supervises Masters students for the Brisbane branch of the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Arts Therapy (MIECAT).

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Aasta Ghandi View Full Bio

Aasta Ghandi is a performer and a researcher, completing her M.Phil in Performance Studies (2007-09) at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She is an active World Dance Alliance member and participated in 'Choreolab Intensive' at WDA-Global Summit, 2008. She also conducted workshop on 'Body Conditioning through Odissi' at WDA-Asia Pacific meet 2006. She has been learning Guru Surendranath Jena style of Odissi dance, in New Delhi

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Shreeparna Ghosal View Full Bio

Dr Shreeparna Ghosal completed a PhD in English Literature under Prof Malabika Sarkar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is secretary of the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature, and freelances as a corporate trainer of business communication and soft skills in the management and IT sectors. She studied Bharatanatyam under Guru Smt Thankamani Kutty, Kalamandalam Kolkata, and has also taught there. She has her own institution of Creative Bharatanatyam called Nrtyaadhar. Ghosal is a performer, teacher and choreographer, a committee member and coordinator of 'Dhitang' Dance and the Child Movement, West Bengal Chapter, and a committee member of World Dance Alliance, West Bengal Chapter.

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Renee Glass View Full Bio

Renee Glass completed a Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) in 2001at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and, having studied piano performance through the Trinity College of Music, took the opportunity to combine her strong interests in psychology and the arts by joining the Conceiving Connections project in 2002. She gained an Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) and is currently a PhD student in the MARCS Auditory Laboratories at UWS. Renee’s research interests include the investigation of cognitive, affective and physiological processes involved in the arts. Currently she is investigating audience response to contemporary dance and developing a scale that will measure such responses.

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Joseph Gonzales View Full Bio

Joseph Gonzales is Head of the Dance Faculty at the National Academy of Arts, Culture and Heritage, ASWARA, Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture, Malaysia. He is one of Malaysia’s leading dance educators, a prolific and versatile choreographer, dance advocate, author, professional curator and a perennial student. Joseph completed his PhD in 2011 and was elected to the Executive Board of the World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific as Vice-President South-East Asia the same year.

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Lesley Graham View Full Bio

Lesley Graham has over 25 years experience as a performer and teacher and in developing programs in dance education and teacher training at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. She is Curriculum Area Manager for the Arts at Ogilvie High School and dance teacher for the Tasmanian Education Department. Lesley has contributed to professional organisations including Ausdance and World Dance Alliance, and to training for studio teachers through the development of units of competency in dance teaching. She contributed to the Curriculum Corporation’s Access Asia project and represented the World Dance Alliance at the World Creativity Summit, Taipei. She was the education consultant on the National Indigenous Dance project Treading the Pathways, and is a member of the Board of the Salamanca Arts Centre.

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Robin Grove View Full Bio

An English lecturer at the University of Melbourne from 1964 – 2006, Robin has published widely on both dance and English literature. He was dance critic for The Australian 1986 – 92, The Age 1992 – 98 and editorial adviser to Brolga from 1994 – 2006, after which he became co-editor. He was also co-editor of The Critical Review. With Shirley McKechnie and Kate Stevens, he was one of three scholars whose research projects, funded by the Australian Research Council, resulted in the publication of Thinking in Four Dimensions: Creativity and Cognition in Contemporary Dance (Melbourne University Press, 2005). First trained as a musician, Robin worked with Laurel Martyn and Ballet Victoria for many years and both choreographed for that company and served on its board of directors.

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John Haag View Full Bio

John Haag has worked in Australia and overseas in a wide range of performance roles. He has also worked as illustrator in places such as QNPWS and QAC. In the last five years Jon studied animation and recently formed Moco, a company that explores motion capture as a tool in live performance. John is currently a Masters Research (performance studies) student at QUT (2008).

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Bree Hadley View Full Bio

Bree Hadley is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and Creative Writing in the School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts, Performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology. Her interests as a performance theorist and practitioner converge around issues of the body, identity, performativity and politics, and her writing about performance has appeared in Australian Stage Online, Australasian Drama Studies and the forthcoming collection International Faust Studies.

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Lynette Haines View Full Bio

Lynette Haines is a teacher for the South Australian Education Department (DECS) and a private dance studio teacher. She lectures in Dance at the University of South Australia, and also works with children and young adults with Downs Syndrome. Lynette has also worked as the Education Officer for Ausdance SA, providing ‘in school’ dance programs and professional development for teachers. Lynette holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Human Movement, first class Honours in Health Science and has a Bachelor of Education (Specialisation) in Secondary Dance. She also holds the Theatrical Teaching Diploma of the Commonwealth Society of Teachers of Dancing, the Teaching Certificate of the Royal Academy of Dance and is a fully registered member of the Royal Academy of Dance.

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Stephanie Hanrahan View Full Bio

Stephanie Hanrahan completed her PhD at The University of Western Australia in the area of attributional style in sport. After a short stint at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Dr Hanrahan joined the academic staff at The University of Queensland as a lecturer in 1990. She was a UQ Teaching Excellence Award winner in 1997 and is currently an associate professor holding a joint appointment with the Schools of Human Movement Studies and Psychology.

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Helen Herbertson View Full Bio

Helen Herbertson has been crafting performance for over three decades for intimate non-theatre venues, traditional theatrical settings, large-scale outdoor sites, theatre and opera performances, educational projects and touring programs. She has been active in the development of Australian dance, dancers and choreographers through a variety of advisory and leadership roles such as Artistic Director of Danceworks (1989-97), Artistic Director of Dancehouse (2001-03) and Deputy Chair of the Dance Fund, Australia Council (1998). Helen's choreographic work has received many awards, including an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance (2003). Her individual awards include the Kenneth Myer Medallion for Outstanding and Distinguished Contribution to the Performing Arts. Helen is Graduate Coordinator, Dance at the University of Melbourne.

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Duncan Holt View Full Bio

Duncan Holt, MA (City University London; Laban), DC (Diploma of Chiropractic Proficiency, McTimoney College), FMCA (Fellow of the McTimoney Chiropractic Association) is a lecturer in Dance in the School of Arts and New Media at the University of Hull in England. His research and scholarly interests include pedagogy in dance, dance writing and practice with emphasis on choreographic practices. His career spans 40 years of performing, making and teaching dance in the UK, Canada and Australia. His second career is as a chiropractor. The synergies found in these two approaches to the body have led to his unique and profound understanding of the lived body experience all of which he incorporates into his practice of both.

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Christina Hong View Full Bio

Associate Professor Christina Hong is Assistant Dean, Teaching & Learning, Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. She has established specific expertise in the fields of arts education curriculum, assessment and leadership. Christina has previously held academic leadership and management responsibility as a Head of Department (school and higher education sectors) and as a National Co-ordinator for the Arts, for the New Zealand Ministry of Education. In 2007, Christina was a Visiting Scholar at Texas Woman’s University, (USA) and in 2008 participated on the Institute for Management and Leadership in Higher Education at the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University.

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Avril Huddy View Full Bio

Avril Huddy is a lecturer in contemporary dance at QUT, having graduated in 1993 with a BA majoring in dance. Avril was a co-founder and co-curator of the Crab Room and Cherry Herring Performance Spaces in Brisbane, and has worked extensively as an independent dance artist. She spent five years with Dancenorth (1997-2001) returning in 2005 as acting tour manager and rehearsal director.

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Jennifer Jackson View Full Bio

Jennifer Jackson is a lecturer at Surrey University and teaches choreography6 at the Royal Ballet School. She is a former dancer with the Royal and Salde3rs Wells Royal Ballet, and co-founder of the Ballet Independents Group (BIG). Her choreography includes commissioned work for ballet companies, fringe theatre, and vocational students, including In the Reveal (2007) and Retrieving the Sylph (2005).

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Phakamas Jirajarupat View Full Bio

Phakamas Jirajarupat completed her BA (Hons) and MA in Thai Classical Dance at Chulalongkom University, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1998 and 2000 respectively. She is a lecturer in the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Rajabhat Suan Sunandha University, Bangkok and is an expert in Thai Royal Court Dance and Thai Folk Dance. She is also a guest lecturer at Bangkok Patana International School, Bangkok, Thailand.

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Jondi Keane View Full Bio

Dr Jondi Keane is an arts practitioner, critical thinker and senior lecturer at Griffith University. Over the last 25 years he has exhibited and performed in the USA, UK, Europe and Aus, most recently he produced the READING ROOM exhibition at the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia (April 2008) and Tuning Fork: Shopfront at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art (Nov 2008). He has published on embodiment, experimental architecture and practice-led research in a range of journals including Ecological Psychology, Janus Head, Interfaces, Text as well as in Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text (2009) from Continuum Press and a volume on Arakawa and Gins from Rodopi Press.

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Sela Kiek View Full Bio

Sela Kiek began working as a dancer/teacher/choreographer after graduating from WAAPA and Adelaide University. Moving to the United Kingdom in 1996, she continued to further her experience of dance, performing and lecturing there until 2004. She continued to pursue her interest in site specific dance throughout this time, creating works for community and professional dancers in various sites, from historic buildings to neglected public places. Sela completed a Master of Philosophy researching site specific performance in 2003 and is undertaking her PhD at Deakin University, investigating audience/ performer spatial relationships in dance created for non-traditional performance venues.

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Ann Kipling Brown View Full Bio

Ann Kipling Brown, Ph.D. is presently a professor in dance education in the Arts Education Program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. She works extensively with children, youth and adults in public and dance studio settings. In this work she has choreographed and led classes in technique, composition, and notation. She has also choreographed for theatre productions and continues her own work in performance and choreography. Her research and publications focus on dance pedagogy, the integration of notation in dance programs, the role of dance in the child’s and adult’s lived world, and technology in arts education.

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Geoffery Kohe View Full Bio

Geoffery Z. Kohe is a Lecturer in Sport Studies and Sociology in the Institute of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Worcester, UK. His research interests include the socio-cultural, historical, and political aspects of the Olympic movement, moral pedagogy, politicizations of the body, sport tourism, and historiography. His current projects include the centennial history of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, research on apologies and public history, and the biopolitics of streaking.

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Alexandra Kolb View Full Bio

Alexandra Kolb, Senior Lecturer and Chair of Dance Studies at the University of Otago, will shortly take up an appointment as Reader in Dance Studies at Middlesex University in the UK. She is the author of Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism (2009) and the editor of Dance and Politics (2010). She has contributed to a range of international journals, including Discourses in Dance, Journal of European Studies and About Performance.

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Sunil Kothari View Full Bio

Sunil Kothari, is a dance historian, scholar, author and critic with more than twelve publications to his credit. Honoured by the President of India with the civil honour of Padma Shri, he is the former Professor and Chair, Department of Dance, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata and Dean and Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Sunil is a Fulbright Professor and visiting Professor Department of Dance, New York University, USA, and was the South Asia Vice-President of World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific (2000-2008) and Vice-President, WDA AP India chapter.

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Susan Kozel View Full Bio

Susan Kozel combines dance and philosophy in the context of new media: in other words she works with bodies, ideas and technologies. She has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Essex, UK (1994), and a long history of various movement techniques (from ballet to butoh) but currently works primarily with phenomenology as a methodology and improvisation and a movement practice. Susan’s current position is Professor of New Media at MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative, Malmö University.

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Donna H. Krasnow View Full Bio

Donna Krasnow is a Professor in the Department of Dance at York University and heads the modern division at the Canadian Children's Dance Theatre. She is on the Board of Directors for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. She specializes in dance science research, concentrating on dance kinesiology, injury prevention, conditioning for dancers, and motor learning and motor control, with a special emphasis on the young dancer.

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Janet Lansdale View Full Bio

Janet Lansdale is Emeritus Professor, University of Surrey, UK, where she was formerly Head of Performing Arts, and Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK. She has published five books on conceptual issues in dance, dance analysis, dance history and interpretation in dance.

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Shelley Lasica View Full Bio

Shelley Lasica has been making and performing dance in Australia and abroad over the past 25 years. Her work, which is often located in non-theatre spaces, includes solos and ensembles, and is firmly based in a discourse that seeks to engage dance with other visual and temporal art forms. In Australia Shelley’s work is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

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Larry Lavender View Full Bio

Larry Lavender is Professor of Dance and Faculty Fellow in the Lloyd International Honors College at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Larry teaches courses in choreography, dance history and criticism, creativity theories and practices, and animal studies in the arts.

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Garry Lester View Full Bio

Garry Lester, PhD, works in the field of movement-based performance practice and education, with more than 35 years experience as a teacher, choreographer, performer and academic. He is a descendant of the Wonnarua people of the Hunter Valley and has recently worked as Traditional Indigenous Dance project officer for ArtBack NT and as principal writer for the NAISDA Dance College course reaccreditation process. His articles have been published widely in 'Brolga—an Australian journal about dance', and his monograph, ‘Regarding Margaret Barr’ is awaiting publication.

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Julie-Anne Long View Full Bio

Julie-Anne Long is an independent dance artist based in Sydney. Since graduating from the Victorian College of Arts in the early 1980s she has performed and choreographed on a wide range of projects with companies such as Human Veins, One Extra, Theatre of Image, Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Bell Shakespeare Company, Open City and Dance Works. From 1991–1996 Julie-Anne was Associate Artistic Director of One Extra Company with Artistic Director Graeme Watson. She has worked in a variety of dance contexts as mentor, dramaturg, curator and producer, including Acting Director of dance research organisation Critical Path (2006–2007) and Dance Curator at Campbelltown Arts Centre (2009–2010). Julie-Anne has a Master of Arts (Honours), and in 2010 she completed a PhD. Julie-Anne was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship in 2007 which encompassed research, development and the realisation of a body of work entitled 'The Invisibility Project'.

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Alys Longley View Full Bio

Alys Longley is a writer, performance maker, a PhD student at the University of Victoria and a senior tutor at the University of Auckland where she specialises in teaching Performance Writing, Research Methodology and Interdisciplinary Creative Practice. Her doctoral research melds poetic writing and choreographic practices.

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Brian Lucas View Full Bio

Brian is a Brisbane-based performer, choreographer, director and writer. Trained in both dance and theatre, he has a reputation for creating and performing provocative, powerful and intelligent works that bridge the divide between the two forms. In addition to his solo practice, Brian has worked with many of Australia’s most well-known performance makers. He was a recipient of a two-year Fellowship from the Australia Council, and is National Vice-President of Ausdance and Associate Director of QL2 Dance, where he has facilitated the Soft Landing mentoring program. Until 2011 he was a member of the Dance Board of the Australia Council.

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Vanessa Mafe-Keane View Full Bio

Brisbane independent choreographer Vanessa Mafé-Keane graduated from Stuttgart Ballet School and danced with The Queensland Ballet. She spent the next 10 years in Geneva, where she danced with Le Ballet du Grand Theatre, touring regularly throughout Europe, later becoming a freelance artist with Vertical Danse-Compagnie Noemi Lapzeson and co-founding member of an experimental performance group Co M-S-K. Vanessa obtained her MFA at QUT where she continues to choreograph works that explore collaborations between video, installation and sound. Vanessa teaches at several institutions including QUT, the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts and Expressions Dance Company.

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Paul Howard Mason View Full Bio

Paul H. Mason is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Macquarie University. He commenced his postgraduate research in psychology, working on Australian Contemporary Dance with MARCS Auditory laboratories. He is currently pursuing his passion for ethnomusicology and dance anthropology by performing fieldwork on practices of fight-dancing in Indonesia and Brazil.

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Shirley McKechnie View Full Bio

Shirley McKechnie OAM has a career in dance that spans five decades, all ‘firsts’ in terms of achievement—founder of one of the first contemporary dance school in Victoria in the 1950s; founder of one of the earliest contemporary dance touring companies as director, choreographer and performer (Australian Contemporary Dance Theatre 1963 – 73); founder of the first tertiary dance degree course (Rusden Campus, 1975); a driving force behind the Armidale choreographic seminars (1974 – 76) and a founder of the Australian Association for Dance Education (Ausdance, 1977). She was a member of the Council of the Victorian College of the Arts (1974 – 88); assisted with the founding of the first dance education company (Tasdance, 1981); the founding chairperson of the Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (1985–86); interviewer and researcher for the National Library of Australia (1980s–90s); guest artist, The Australian Ballet (Nutcracker, 1992); National President, Ausdance (1992 – 94); founder of Green Mill Dance Project (1993 – 97); first Australian Research Council grant for choreographic research (Unspoken Knowledges, 1998–2000); Professor of Dance (VCA, 1998); elected as Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (1998). Shirley is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the VCA/University of Melbourne and continues as a consultant and a leading advocate for dance in Australia.

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Shaun McLeod View Full Bio

Shaun McLeod has danced with Australian Dance Theatre, Danceworks, One Extra and Company in Space, and in various independent projects. He has created or collaborated on works such as 'In Visible Ink' (1995 Green Room award nomination), 'Cowboy Songs' (1997), 'Fallow' (Danceworks, 1997) and 'Chamber' (2002 Green Room award for best video). Shaun was invited to perform at the 2005 Seoul International Crossover Improvisation Festival, was a participant/researcher in the improvisation event Precipice 2006 at the Australian Choreographic Centre, performed in john cage’s 'musicircus' for the 2008 Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, and in 2009 presented 'The weight of the thing left its mark' at Dancehouse. He is interested in the ways in which performance improvisation intersects with choreography and believes that arts practice is a rich research methodology.

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Jeff Meiners View Full Bio

Jeff Meiners has worked widely in dance and is a lecturer with the University of South Australia. He has taught in schools, led dance education teams, guest tutoring in Australia, England, Portugal, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Taiwan. His work has included projects with young children, youth dance and disability, plus partnerships with government and education departments. With Ausdance NSW he worked in metropolitan and rural regions initiating the Western Sydney and Northern Rivers Dance Action projects and has worked as movement director for Cat and Boom Bah! with Windmill Theatre. Jeff was a member of the Australia Council’s Dance Board, is co-chair of the World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific Education & Training network and a member of the National Advocates for Arts Education, working with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority for dance in the national curriculum. Jeff received the 2010 Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance Education.

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Elizabeth Melchior View Full Bio

Elizabeth Melchoir M.Ed is a dance lecturer in the School of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She also works as a dance facilitator providing professional development and support to teachers in primary and secondary schools and coordinates the Wellington Dance in Education Networks. She is a member of the Educational Advisory Board for DANZ and of Footnote Dance Company.

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Anny Mokotow View Full Bio

Anny Mokotow studied dance at the Theatreschool Amsterdam and worked as dancer/performer and artistic director from 1982 until 1996. She studied film at the Victorian College of the Arts and was production designer and art director until 2001. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne from where she holds an MA in Creative Arts with a study on dance and multimedia. Anny currently lives in Paris where she is writing her thesis on dance, dramaturgy and the dance dramaturg.

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Skye Murtagh View Full Bio

Skye Murtagh is the director of SDM Communications, an Adelaide-based consultancy specialising in the preparation of written collateral for individuals and businesses as well as the development/execution of public relations campaigns. A qualified journalist, Skye has been engaged as a freelance writer for several publications and has worked closely with a range of South Australian artistic companies across the fields of contemporary dance, film and music.

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Joshua Newman View Full Bio

Joshua I. Newman is Associate Professor of Sport Management at Florida State University. He lectures in the areas of sport and physical culture, qualitative research, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy. Broadly speaking,his research, teaching, and supervision interrogate intersections of late capitalism, identity, and cultural politics of the moving body.

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Lee Pemberton View Full Bio

Lee trained at the VCA School of Dance Melbourne and has worked as an independent dancer/choreographer and secondary schools teaching dance for many years. Since 1998 Lee has been living on the far South Coast of NSW where she runs the youth company fLiNG Physical Theatre in the Bega Valley. The company’s work has since created a solid interest in contemporary dance and physical theatre in the region, and has become the State’s first professionally funded youth dance company. Its program includes visiting professional artists, training for young people aged 10 to 24, workshops for the community and professional touring opportunities for fLiNG’s performance company.

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Maggi Phillips View Full Bio

Dr Maggi Phillips is Associate Professor and the Coordinator of Research and Creative Practice at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, a position that fuses her disparate influences, provoking understanding of knowledge’s variable manifestations and a desire to privilege such diversity in scholarship and access. She lectures in a range of dance and performance studies, supervises within the school’s postgraduate programme and writes on dance from numerous perspectives, including cultural distinctiveness, singular knowledge and danced thought. Together with colleagues from QUT and Deakin, Maggi led the Australian Learning and Teaching Council project, Dancing between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Post Graduate Degrees in Dance, which highlighted the particularities encountered in multi-modal artistic research. In 2010, Maggi received an Australian Dance Award for her Services to Dance Education.

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Michelle Potter View Full Bio

Michelle Potter is a writer, historian and curator with a doctorate in Art History and Dance History from the Australian National University. She was founding editor of Brolga–an Australian journal about dance, inaugural Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia (2002 – 06) and Curator, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (2006 – 08). Her writing has been published in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. It includes over 30 scholarly works including three major books, chapters in several books and articles in scholarly journals, including Dance Research, Dance Chronicle, Voices and Brolga. She has also published over 500 shorter articles and reviews in popular magazines, theatre programs and newspapers, including Ballet News, The Canberra Times, Dance Australia, Muse and The National Library Magazine. She has recorded over 100 oral history interviews and has curated two major exhibitions: Dance people, dance (1997) for the National Library of Australia and INVENTION: Merce Cunningham and collaborators (2007) for the New York Public Library. Michelle’s awards include an International Dance Day Award (1996), a Canberra Critics Circle Award (1997) and two Australian Dance Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film (2001) and Services to Dance (2003)

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Katrina Rank View Full Bio

Katrina trained at The Australian Ballet School and performed with The Dancers Company, the Victorian State Opera and Northern Ballet Theatre (UK). In 1994 she was awarded a Bachelor of Education in Dance and Drama and has worked extensively in community dance. In 1996 she began her PhD research involving untrained dancers in the study of narrative applications in dance performance, and was awarded her doctorate in 2000. Katrina was a Caroline Plummer Fellow of Otago University, New Zealand in 2007, and in 2009 was artist in residence at Darebin, delivering a dance-film YoursTruly, an installation project for dancers with disabilities. In her role at Ausdance Victoria, Katrina designs and delivers specialist education and training programs, resources which offer professional development opportunities for teachers, students and trainers.

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Dianne Reid View Full Bio

Dianne Reid is an independent dance and video artist. She was a founding member of Outlet Dance in Adelaide (1987–89), and a member of Danceworks from 1990–95. She was Associate Lecturer in contemporary dance, physical theatre and dance video at Deakin University from 1996–2004 and completed a Master of Arts in Dance on Screen in 2001. Her dance video works have screened internationally, including ADF Dancing for the Camera (USA), Videodance (Greece), and on Channel 31 (Australia). From 2004-2006 she was Artistic Director of Dancehouse, Melbourne’s centre for independent contemporary dance. Dianne has choreographed live dance works for many tertiary institutions, and she published a book chapter ‘Cutting choreography’ in 2007 in 'Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry'. Dianne video documents live dance and performance in Melbourne and continues to performs regularly.

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Sarah Rubidge View Full Bio

Sarah Rubidge is Professor of Choreography and New Media at the University of Chichester. A practitioner-scholar, she specialises in developing large-scale choreographic digital installations that focus on the use of the haptic senses as the primary medium of understanding. Her artistic research also draws on the liminal histories embodied in old buildings. Along with her collaborators Sarah has created works which can accommodate improvisational choreographies (formal and informal) that become integral choreographic elements of the installations. In her academic writing she addresses the interweaving of the philosophical and scientific ideas that are embodied in both her work and that of other artists working in this field, advancing understandings of the intricate interplay between artistic and philosophical practices.

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Emery Schubert View Full Bio

Emery Schubert is an Associate Professor in the Empirical Musicology Group School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales, co-editor of Acoustics Australia and secretary of the Australian Music and Psychology Society (AMPS). His key research areas are in music perception and cognition, with specialisation in continuous measurement of aesthetic and affective responses to music.

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Marianne Schultz View Full Bio

Marianne was a professional dancer and dance teacher in the USA, UK and New Zealand. She was a member of Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians from 1982–85 and worked with One Extra Company in 1988. She has taught and performed throughout New Zealand and has presented papers on dance research internationally for Ausdance, CORD (Congress on Research in Dance) and SDHS (Society of Dance History) She has an MA (Performing Arts) and an MA in History (University of Auckland).

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Catherine Seago View Full Bio

Catherine Seago is a lecturer in Dance at the University of Winchester and Artistic Director of EvolvingMotion. Her research areas are interdisciplinary collaborative processes, and physical knowledge and codified techniques in choreographic language. She has studied at University Surrey Roehampton UK, at Sarah Lawrence College and MCDS, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar.

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The Fondue Set View Full Bio

The Fondue Set are three women who have been making work together for over ten years, creating a distinct style, dance language and identity. They are an ever-evolving entity, always active in exploring their movement language, and seeking opportunities to work with new people and processes in order to shift the parameters of their work. Much of their unique dance language has come from an interest in exploring issues such as the ‘awkward body’, the moments in between, before, or just after, mistakes and humour, and they have placed their work in various foyers, nightclubs and bars in the Campbelltown Arts Centre and the Sydney Opera House. Their full–length work ‘No Success Like Failure’ won a Green Room Award for ‘Innovation in the form of Cabaret’.

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Catherine Stevens View Full Bio

Dr Catherine (Kate) Stevens applies experimental psychology methods to the study of auditory and temporal phenomena including music, dance, and environmental sounds. She holds BA (Hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Sydney. Kate is an Associate Professor in Psychology, MARCS Auditory Laboratories at the University of Western Sydney.

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Cheryl Stock View Full Bio

Cheryl Stock PhD is Director of Postgraduate Studies, Faculty of Creative Industries, at Queensland University of Technology. She was the 2003 recipient of the Australian Dance Awards Lifetime Achievement, and is currently lecturing and researching in the areas of contemporary performance (dance-led and interdisciplinary), site-specific installation and interactive performance, intercultural arts (particularly in an Asian context), and practice-led research. Secretary-General of the World Dance Alliance, Dr Stock has had an extensive career as director, choreographer, performer, teacher and researcher. She was founding director of Dance North (1984-1995), and has facilitated 19 cultural exchange programs in Asia. In 2006 Dr Stock produced and directed a transcultural interactive work 'Accented Body', which took place across six sites with distributed presences in Seoul and London, and she coordinated the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in Brisbane in 2008.

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Ross Stretton View Full Bio

1952–2005: Ross Stretton began his dance training as a tap dancer in Canberra before taking up ballet at the age of seventeen. He was accepted into The Australian Ballet School in 1971, and in his first year was awarded the Nureyev Bursary, followed by the Harold Holt Memorial Scholarship. He joined The Australian Ballet in 1973, was promoted to soloist in 1974 and principal artist in 1978. From 1979–96, Ross performed with companies in the US and UK, before becoming the sixth Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, expanding its repertoire to include many outstanding contemporary ballets. Three words encapsulated his vision for the company: ‘creativity, energy, passion’. After four–and–a half–years as AD of The Australian Ballet, Ross became Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet in London, before returning to Australia in 2002.

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Jill Sykes View Full Bio

Jill Sykes AM began reviewing dance in London and is dance critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. She has been a freelance arts journalist most of her career, writing about theatre, music and the visual arts as well as dance. She is editor of ‘Look’ — the membership magazine of the Art Gallery Society of NSW, author of the book ‘Sydney Opera House — From The Outside In’ and editor of the book on the TV series ‘Wine Lovers’ Guide to Australia’, as well as a contributor on dance to specialist publications in Australia and overseas.

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Tetsutoshi Tabata View Full Bio

Tetsutoshi Tabata is a visual installation artist deeply involved with dance performance and projected scenography. In 1994 he co-founded 66b/cell, a collective using real time and pre-recorded computer graphics and animation to create different textures, lighting and kinetic effects. He is currently developing an original multiple projection imaging system.

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Meryl Tankard View Full Bio

Meryl Tankard is a director/choreographer with a celebrated career both nationally and internationally. She began as a dancer with the Australian Ballet and went on to join Pina Bausch’s Wuppertaler Tanztheater in Germany as a principal soloist. Since 1984 Meryl has created and produced her own dance theatre productions and directed two companies in Australia. Her work has toured to prestigious festivals and venues all over USA , Europe and Asia and she has been the recipient of many awards both here and overseas. As a freelance artist Meryl has created works for major European dance companies including the Lyon Ballet and Netherlands Dance Theatre. In 2000 she created Deep Sea Dreaming, which opened the Sydney Olympic Opening Ceremony and she has choreographed musicals for Disney on Broadway and London’s West End, as well as choreographing for opera and film. Several of her works have been co-produced by the Sydney Opera House and ABC TV has televised her work for the Australia Ballet and Opera Australia. A documentary on her life/work entitled Black Swan was produced by Don Featherstone. Meryl also has a Graduate Degree in film directing from AFTRS.

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Kristin Tovson View Full Bio

Kristin Tovson graduated with a Master’s of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University. As a dancer, she has performed primarily in New York and Boston working with Sara Sweet Rabidoux/hoi polloi. She is the recipient of a 2009-10 Fulbright grant to collaborate with Berlin-based artist Thomas Lehmen, researching choreographic forms and improvisational tools and making a new piece while living in Berlin for the year. She continues to be inspired by her work with dance in a variety of community arts contexts and hopes to continue documenting the importance of community-based work.

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Hilary Trotter View Full Bio

Hilary was dance critic for the Canberra Times from 1972 – 90. She Was a founding member of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now Australian Dance Council-Ausdance Inc.) in 1977. and its national president from 1981-84. Hilary was national joint coordinator of Ausdance until 1991, co-managing many projects including partnerships with the National Arts Industry Training Council and the Austraian Institute of Sport. She was writer and editor for many Ausdance publications, and originated the term Safe Dance.

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Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk View Full Bio

Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk studied the Japanese dance-theatre butoh from 1992–1996 in Tokyo and in 1994 co-founded 66b/cell as a result of work combining body movement and multimedia. She completed a practice-led PhD at Queensland University of Technology in 2007, investigating interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic media.

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Jordan Beth Vincent View Full Bio

Jordan Vincent has completed her PhD thesis, In Pursuit of a Dancing ‘Body’: Modernity, Physicality and Identity in Australia, 1919 to 1939, from the University of Melbourne (2010). She holds a postgraduate diploma in choreography from the Victorian College of the Arts (2005) and undergraduate degrees in Dance and History with a minor in Classics from the University of Washington (2004). In 2004, she was awarded Kenneth G. Allen Undergraduate Library Award for her research on ancient fertility cults. Since 2008, Jordan has reviewed dance, circus and physical theatre for Melbourne’s The Age newspaper, as well as contributing to a number of national, international and web-based publications.

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Kim Vincs View Full Bio

Associate Professor Kim Vincs is the Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab, which she established in 2006. Dr Vincs’ research interests are in motion capture, dance and interactive technology and integrating practice-led artistic research with quantitative, scientific methods. Current projects include developing new mathematical methods for analysing movement signatures using motion capture data, creating dance/motion capture performances using stereoscopic projection and measuring audience response to dance. Kim also teaches motion capture at Deakin University and directs for commercial motion capture projects. She was awarded two national Australian Council of Teaching and Learning awards in 2006 for her work in dance and motion capture.

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Junji Watanabe View Full Bio

Junji Watanabe received his PhD in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2005 and his MA in Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics in 2002. His research interests lie in the area of cognitive science involving motion and visual perception, as well as auditory and tactile interfaces for communication devices.

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Yukihiko Yoshida View Full Bio

Yukihiko Yoshida is a dance critic, researcher and educator. He is a committee member of the Dance Critics Society of Japan and has written numerous reviews and articles for dance magazines and newspapers. He also works for network divisions of academic organisations, constructing research grids on dance. He studies and teaches Media Studies, Theatre Research, Cognitive Science (Cognition Studies), Film Studies and Dance Studies.

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Ann Young View Full Bio

Ann Young is a University of New South Wales PhD researcher, holds an MA (UWS), Post-Graduate Certificate Dance Teaching (UTS) and is a registered Cecchetti Ballet teacher and schoolteacher. Ann and family performed with Australian Heritage Dancers and she has taught Bush Dance and Folk Dance. She was awarded an Honorary Life Membership of Ausdance NSW for her contribution to dance a voluntary worker.

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Jennifer de Leon View Full Bio

Jennifer De Leon is a dance performer, choreographer and teacher and Director of Poyema Dance Company. She is also a psychotherapist (NZAP) and dance therapist, trained in UK, USA and NZ and founder of The Healing Dance Dance/Movement Psychotherapy, as well as a Laban Movement Fundamentals Certificated Practitioner (New York), a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming, and registered Dance Teacher (NZADT). Jenny is based in Auckland where she lives with her 2 children and is currently, alongside her dancing activities, embarking on her Doctorate.

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Scott deLahunta View Full Bio

Scott deLahunta works from his base in Amsterdam as a researcher, writer and organiser on a wide range of international projects bringing performing arts into conjunction with other disciplines and practices. He is a Research Fellow with Dartington College of Arts and the Amsterdam School of the Arts.

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